astronaut status
First
Xander stared into the splash of foam along the skin of his almond milk Spanish latte. It twirled and spread into the shape of a launching swan, wings spread to take off.
“It looks so lifelike,” Xander muttered.
“What?” Juliette, his agent and former lover, had been speaking.
“They’re really talented here. They’re like chemists, but also artists,” Xander said. “They’re underpaid.”
Juliette drew a sigh from the air that also sounded a bit like moaning. It sounded painful, Xander thought. She really was getting fed up, wasn’t she? He knew Juliette was about to start. She always made that awful sound when she was about to complain about something he was doing.
Xander put his hand up.
“I’m sorry,” he started. “I just can’t focus on this anymore.” He almost called her “baby” and caught himself. “I know you’re doing so much for me and I’m not doing much of anything to help, but I’m really trying.”
She stayed silent and bit the inside of her mouth, the flesh right below her lower lip. Her lovely brown eyes followed the line between two of the table’s wood panels. People bustled around the cafe, ordering drinks, trying not to spill their drinks, laughing. Amidst the living soundscape, a dark-haired girl in black skinny jeans stood up abruptly, the scrape of her chair like a vinyl scratch, and sauntered out onto the street.
“It’d just be sad to give up on the guys that got you here,” Juliette said finally. “We love you, Xander.” She took a heavy breath. “You’re a star, you always were.”
The man who’d just been abandoned rested his temples in his palms, his plaid shirtsleeves hanging limply from his arms.
Xander looked down from him to Juliette’s pretty face, jawline so deliberately carved, back to the leaping swan.
“Jules,” he said, “there’s always been a glass ceiling in porn. You think the world really has enough room for James Dean, Mike Adriano, then me? Wait for one of them to die, maybe. But until then, I’m just going to be another dude fucking the star.”
Juliette ran her ruby fingernails through her golden hair. “I just don’t understand. What, you want a Golden Globe?”
“Yes!” Xander responded, leaning. “And an Oscar too! Four of ‘em! One for best supporting, then two for best lead, then two for best director. Hell, I’ll take a lifetime achievement award if the academy will have me, I’m only twenty five, there’s time.” He took a sip of the cooling latte, and saw the swan still mostly retained its shape.
Juliette gave Xander the smile that hurt him most, the warm one that also said I’m sorry that you’re so stupid.
“Jules,” he said, “I love you all back, but when I die, I want a tombstone larger than my junk. I want to be an artist.”
“Baby,” Juliette responded, fingering the handle of her coffee mug. “You always were an artist, and now you have the chance to make your art the way you always wanted it to be.”
Directing pornography in the San Fernando Valley isn’t art, hon, Xander thought.
“In a way,” Xander said slowly. “In a way.”
Second
A click. “You’re on speakerphone,” Xander said. He took a bite of toast with marmalade. Crumbs fell on the lap of his sweatpants and he brushed them onto the kitchen floor.
“Great,” the amicable voice on the other end said. “Having breakfast?”
“Yep,” Xander replied.
“Bright and early, I love it.”
Juliette often told told Xander that she didn’t love working with Hollywood-industry types back when she was a Hollywood agent. It wasn’t because of any distaste for the excesses of capitalism or because they were pushy or something like that. They were just, to Juliette, fake. They smiled at walking money, and pushed the weirdos or really anyone they couldn’t typecast to the streets. That’s what both she and Xander liked about pornography. It was where the weirdos went. So what if you’ve got some missing teeth, or you’ve got a beer belly you can’t lose, or, hell, you’re just really ugly? There’s still a place for you at BangBros or Brazzers or wherever. You could be an outcast but still loved, still bring happiness to strangers, still be an icon for something powerful — human sexuality. That’s why Juliette only took adult film actors as clients these days.
When Xander stepped into his first shoot at the age of nineteen, he was a little terrified. His parents, both Catholic Mass-goers who’d met in a computer science lab at Washington University of St. Louis, Missouri, had warned him. You’re fucking for money, his father had said. Just fucking for money. He’d been furious. Wouldn’t talk to Xander for the longest time.
“Mr. Cherry,” the voice continued, “We’ve been very excited to speak with you about this opportunity.”
What kind of a name is Xander Cherry, anyway? You’re afraid to be a Walsh?
His mother was always kinder to him, even a little supportive at times.
Don’t be so anal, Gregory, she’d joke to his father. Matt’s an actor, and an actor needs a stage name.
Forget about it, I don’t even want him soiling the name Walsh with his pink acting.
Except now, Xander didn’t even keep in touch with his mother. Only Aurora, his sixteen year-old and surviving sister, had texted him to congratulate him on scoring a meeting with a representative from Universal.
His sister Samantha had been two years his senior and now he was five years older than she’d been at her last birthday party. She’d died in a fire sleeping over at a tourist’s Air BnB while studying abroad at the University of Paris. She’d been studying fashion, which didn’t excite her parents but would make her happy and put bread on the table. Something about Sam had told Xander that she was never actually planning on a real career — she’d let her hobby take over her professional aspirations, but she’d have been happy sewing clothes for the beautiful children she’d have with an aristocratic Parisian. Before she left for college, Xander and Sam had been almost tragically tight. She helped him dress for church, dances and dates, among other things (he’d won the eighth grade award for ‘Best Dressed’ thanks to her, a little space in the yearbook that he always kept in his bedroom). They shared jokes, books, mixtapes and everything they knew about sex. Sam was obsessed with the world of intercourse: all the positions, methods, safety measures, neurological responses. Stacks of xeroxed-and-annotated essays by Richard von Kraft-Ebing were piled up on her bedroom desk next to a well-worn copy of the Kama Sutra and and countless un-erotic diagrams. Xander had seen Sam’s interest as borderline-obsessive, but found the secrets she uncovered sometimes brilliant.
But the fire took Sam and left Xander more alone than he ever knew he could feel. Aurora would never remember Sam. Xander sometimes suspected Aurora was the reset switch on the family legacy, a way to recover from Xander’s perceived failure as a son and the void left by Sam.
Xander took another bite of toast, reclining in a black wing chair at the breakfast table. The kitchen was made of cool colors, blues and greens and teals. A ceramic pattern of running rabbits laid into the walls circled around the room. A visitor once noted that rabbits are known for their fertility.
Maybe they were, Xander had thought, but work should be left in the workplace. Rabbits were also known for being very cuddly.
“I’m very excited to be speaking with you, Mr. Stellar,” Xander replied. “I must say, Space Camp sounds like a winner. I loved the concept, loved the script, love it all.”
In fact, Xander didn’t “love” the idea of a secret government program meant to put a handful of talented male idiots through the conditions of space travel during the 1980s. He thought it was a little stupid, but he also thought that not everybody had the luck of being picked up by a famous director after they were seen in a diet soda commercial. Playing a buffoon in a stupid comedy starring Kevin James would have to be his big break, after all.
“It came through in your audition, Mr. Cherry, it really did. How do you feel, then, about coming onto Universal’s studios in beautiful Hollywood?”
Wouldn’t call it beautiful, Xander thought.
“I’m not absolutely convinced yet, Mr. Stellar,” Xander replied.
“Please,” Mr. Stellar interrupted, laughing briefly, “call me George.”
They believe their own bullshit so hard they even talk like they’re in movies.
“Well, George — wait, that’s an interesting name, where’s that from? Stellar, I mean.”
A crackle of pleasant (but artificial) laughter rose from the speaker. “It’s German,” it resolved. “Actually, fun fact, my great-great grandfather was actually Georg Wilhelm Stellar, who first discovered the Stellar’s sea cow.”
“Now, that is some fun fact, George,” Xander said, looking up at the abstract vision of the story of Moby Dick that took up much of the free kitchen wall. The whale’s oblong ivory mass rose out from the ocean, white water spouting into a violent crimson sky. Yes, jokes had been made when Xander won the bidding for it, but he hadn’t dropped a few grand on the picture for the sake of crude humor. For one thing, it was an intensely evocative image in its violence, with one boat flying into the blood-red sky, passengers falling into the turbulent waters. Then there was the stunning image of Captain Ahab’s minute figure, harpoon in hands, cast against the beast, phallic though it may have been. “So, I’ve gotta get down to brass tacks, very busy today,” Xander continued. “What are the details?”
“Glad you asked,” the speakerphone intoned. “You’d come down Los Angeles in May to film, probably stay on set ‘till the end of August.”
A pause.
“Okay,” Xander said, “and the check?”
“Seventy thousand and a three-movie contract.”
Another pause.
“Mr. Cherry?”
Mr. Stellar, sitting in his chair in Universal Studios, was surrounded by photographs. Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansen, of course Clint Eastwood, all smiling broadly, a constellation of performers proud to star in Universal pictures, framed in black wooden rectangles bought in bulk at OfficeMax. A miniature Roger Stellar, George’s father, stood alongside a miniature Cary Grant. Roger’s toothy smile and horn-rimmed glasses were crushingly dorky side-by-side with Cary’s debonaire and dashing demeanor. George toyed with a Fifty Shade of Grey-branded click pen while he waited.
He cleared his throat intentionally.
“Mr. Cherry?”
A crunch of toast came through the speaker in Mr. Stellar’s office.
“Can I call you back tomorrow?” Xander asked. “I realized to discuss this with a relative.”
“Sure thing,” Mr. Stellar replied. “I’ll give you ’til Monday. Pleasure speaking with you, Mr. Cherry.”
“You too.”
The speakerphone beeped and the call ended.
Third
Samantha Grace Walsh
February 20 1989 — June 9 2009
“You can live to be a hundred if you give up
all the things that make you want to
live to be a hundred.” — Woody Allen
Fourth
“That’s a wrap!”
The end of his first scene ever. The director clapped, and the whole world seemed to accelerate and expand. It almost felt as though Xander had lost sense of himself in the final moments of the shoot. He scouted the details: he was fully naked, splayed on an air mattress. A nude red-haired girl with surprisingly large nipples was already standing over him, wiping her face with a blue rag. She was laughing like a schoolgirl at a dirty joke one of the camera men had told. Xander hadn’t heard it. From the moment of ejaculation until the scene-end clap, he’d been in some kind of trance. A moment of sordid pleasure smeared with the grease of capitalism… was that what had felt weird? Was it the cameras? The lights? Something this girl, his co-star, had said or done? Or looked like?
“Xander, get up!”
“Give him a few minutes, he just did!”
“Great work, but we gotta clean up, man.”
The blood seemed to take a while to reach the rest of his body again. So this was what possession felt like.
-
Minutes later, zipping up his trousers, he felt a firm pat on the back. It was David, the director.
“Good shit, kid,” he said through a luxurious handlebar mustache. David was from Oakland. “How’d it feel?”
How did it feel?
“Natural, I guess,” Xander said, and meant it. “A little disorienting on the way back.”
David laughed the way he’d done before, obnoxiously, like he intended to get a hairball out of his throat. “Of course, it felt natural! Most natural thing in the world,” then, winking and lowering his voice, added, “to an actor,” as though he was confiding a secret of the trade. “Yeah, it’s a little weird getting over being filmed butt-naked and spunking all over some chick you barely know. But I promise you that it gets a lot better from here on out. Ever heard about chemistry?”
“There were a few at work here,” Xander said.
“A few what?”
“A few chemistries,” Xander explained, meekly. He was trying a little too hard, it felt, but he enjoyed David’s chummy, if obtuse personality.
David laughed even harder this time, one single cackle like a shotgun shell. “This kid!” He took a pretend swipe at Xander, who flinched anyway. “This kid’s a nutcase! I like you. A superstar in the making.”
-
Dressed in his Sunday best, Xander held out a bouquet of carnations.
“Sam,” he whispered to the granite headstone, “I’m back. I miss you, you know.” He leaned the cerulean flowers on the stone, adorned with all violets and yellows and reds, lavender and chamomiles and poppy flowers. “Wish you’d come back from France. Here.”
He retrieved a red pack of cigarettes with a silver winged helmet on the cover.
“Vintage Gauloises. The real shit. Got them while I was in Amsterdam with Juliette.” He gingerly placed it below the epitaph. “Best agent I could ever have. Still kind of surprised she puts up with me since we broke off the engagement.”
A strand of wind streamed through the ornamental flowers, as though the grave were rustling in approval.
“Mom and Dad come by lately?” Xander noticed a few white Calla lilies, their sign of visitation. “Ah. At least you’ve heard from them. I just hope mom knows I’m still alive. Or at least wondering.”
Xander sat by the gravestone for a few silent minutes, mulling and ruminating. His eyelids felt heavy, and he wanted to sleep.
Dinner with the crew, on the studio tonight. The Korean barbecue joint was packed, but the crew only took up two long tables. Xander’s blond hair was growing in nicely after the buzzcut required for his last project about a marine returning home to his lovely wife and her four rambunctious sisters. The five “siblings” (two of whom really were sisters, twins actually) alternated with the techies and the odor of cheap, fruity perfume mingled in an odd way with the savory smell of steaming beef and pork. A space was left empty for Juliette, who’d been caught in traffic.
The first platter of beef tongue came to the tables, and one of the actresses (who was, conveniently enough, South Korean — the adopted-sister quirk was an easy fetish to throw into the mix) monitored the meat as it sizzled and darkened. Xander wrapped some kimchi in a square of rice noodle and chewed as the girl who had played his wife divulged her acting experience.
“Well, you know, like, I played Queen Esther in third grade at my Jewish private school,” she said, her eyes ringed with eyeshadow like a raccoon drawn in Sharpie. “Then I was Betty Rizzo in Grease, in high school, then I got to be Pamela in The 39 Steps which was cool. I kinda fucked the drama director a few times but he knew I was made for the stage anyway.”
“That’s funny,” the Korean actress said as she flipped a piece of tongue. “I’d never acted, I actually just have a friend who works in production that thought I’d have fun here. I mean, I modeled, but I’d never thought about doing videos or anything like that.”
“Jess,” Xander said to her, “this company needs more classically beautiful women such as yourself.”
Jess laughed. “Says the walking Michelangelo’s David himself.”
The clopping of Juliette’s wedge pumps broke off the need for Xander to respond with grace.
“Hey, sexy,” Xander chimed as she took a seat next to him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and she nuzzled her head against his neck.
David (it was always David, never Dave, never D-Dog, always David) raised a ceramic cup of sake and toasted everyone.
“To the fantastic cast and crew of ‘Sibling Rivalry 14,’ another beautiful family outing,” he joked and gulped down his drink.
“Here, here,” the table cried, drinks raised.
“Meat’s probably ready,” Jess said, and the merry men and women picked up their chopsticks and reached for the crackling slices.
Juliette’s teeth were so white.
-
The growing current of wind made Xander open his eyes. Sam’s grave was an obelisk, the immovable reminder of time’s indefatigability and the past’s insistence. Only the mixed bouquet that slept atop and around the stone seemed alive, shuddering as the morning wind blew through the flowers. Something curious: Xander had passed by graveyards plenty of times before Sam died and felt nothing. There was always the sense of comprehension, an appreciation for loss and the bravery of accepting the void of death, no matter the circumstance. He’d seen people die on the news, in the papers, even knew of people dying back home in San Francisco. But when death visits your doorstep, it takes something away you always, deep down, assumed you’d have. Forever ends.
The thing was, graveyards still remained quiet masses of stones, some decorated and others hopelessly unadorned. Just one new resident took on some kind of identity, but other than her, Xander would have more feeling for a field of Moai heads. He didn’t feel sorry for the other buried lives, the rest of the city of death that lurked below the grass and rotted away in commune. To them, Xander was a stranger until the day that he would be a permanent resident. He preferred they just gave her back to him.
He sighed.
“Sam, I think I’m gonna have a smoke,” he said, and picked up the box of French cigarettes, gingerly took off the plastic packaging, and pulled out a cigarette. It was pretty, with a sliver of a golden band along the edge of the roach. A dog barked far away.
Xander pulled out a handy black Pornhub-branded lighter, which he’d received at a business meeting a few years back. He always enjoyed the looks people gave when he retrieved it, but now he held it alone, unseen, by his dead sister’s gravestone. Placing the cigarette in his mouth and covering the lighter and his face, he tried to spark up, but couldn’t. The wind licked roughly at the startup flames.
“Give me a hand, huh?” he said, a little jokingly, crouching down into the face of the headstone to shield the lighter from the winds which blew toward its face.
The next moments were odd, illusory, terrifying. The light sprang up, empowered by a strand of wind, and caught onto the flowers, which burst into combustion. The whole grave seemed to burn. A ravenous blaze spread along the adornments of the granite, its myriad tongues licking at the sky, lashing at him, screaming. It seemed to rise up, arms outstretched to the clouds, begging for something, and Xander could only stand back and watch in shock, feet rooted to the earth, shadow taped to the grass, silhouette stapled to the sky. A clammy hand still held the Pornhub lighter.
Xander thought he caught his reflection in the visage of the fire, but either it mutated or he was wrong, the outlines and features more startlingly resembling Samantha Walsh, age twenty. His snowy hair droops into her blond locks, his rigid musculature shifts into her athletic svelteness. She, in turn, melts into the coarsely hairy arms of a young man from Grenoble, in town for the week in Paris. They kiss in their embrace, and Xander can no longer see the borders of the picture, which it seems he now stands in.
A second woman emerges from the incensed botany, a skinny figure in a turtleneck and miniskirt. As she pulls the turtleneck off, another man rises into being. He unclips the buckle of his belt just as a new woman appears. Then another man. Another woman. Their clothing falls to the floor, and Xander watches as they all bend, meld, subsume themselves within a carnal void. He’d always known Samantha to be a sexual being, a young girl obsessed with the impulses and underlying circuitry that manipulated sexuality and lust. But to see this, now.
When it happened, Xander hadn’t wanted to know why Sam died. He knew there’d been a fire at an Air BnB in Paris, and that she was staying at a school dorm, so it wasn’t her place. But that was all he’d ever wanted to know. As far as he was concerned, nobody dies at twenty for a good reason. Mom and Dad, in their intense mourning, had unleashed their frustration on Xander for what they called his apathy. It was around this time that he began to find fulfillment in adult performance, and truly began to sever the ties between him and his parents. Mom grew accepting, but Xander wondered if that was only because she didn’t quite care anymore.
The horror of the fiery portrait calms as the bodies all at once quit their quivering and convulsing. A sort of calm satisfaction seems to pervade what Xander sees, though he unconsciously chews his tongue and his hands are clammy with moisture. The first man, his hairy arms also awash with sweat, pulls a red pack of cigarettes and a book of matches from the coffee table.
A scrape of match against phosphorus, then a great blaze. The atmosphere ignites into a fireball, and the flames above the grave grow opaque. The show had ended, the curtain closed, and the flowers all turn to ash.
A middle-aged man with a potbelly and a wife-beater belatedly poured water over Sam’s headstone.
“Are you crazy?” he shouted at Xander.
Fifth
“Rocket Man” by Elton John crooned its way out of George Stellar’s office computer speakers that Monday morning.
“Xander Cherry on the first line,” his assistant said.
“Thanks, Margo, I’ll take it.”
The music paused. He answered on speakerphone.
“Good morning, Mr. Cherry.”
Xander reached into his boxers to scratch himself.
“Hey, George,” he said, cordless phone at his ear. “How’s it going?”
“I’m doing very well, thanks,” Mr. Stellar responded. “How is your Monday treating you?”
“Just hanging out, taking in the morning.” Xander stood in a baggy t-shirt and underwear at his balcony. He looked out above his backyard at a telephone line, where two sparrows stood complacently. “I think I’ll take your offer.”
“You think?” George responded.
“I will take your offer. In fact, I’d love to.”
“Great to hear, Mr. Cherry, great to hear,” the voice said calmly.
“You know what, George,” Xander said, “call me Xander.”
“Gladly, Xander.”
Xander assumed George was used to dealings like this, maybe more used to hearing yes than no. Far be it from Mr. Cherry to deny Mr. Stellar the pleasure of a contract deal gone well. “Now, you understand you’ll no longer be able to associate with your, erm, previous industry from the moment you sign this contract forward?”
The words “previous industry” came out as though Xander had been in the business of pushing heroin. He was a little offended.
“George, no offense intended, but I’d enjoy it greatly if you treated a seven-year career with a little more respect,” Xander retorted. “There seems to be a fallacy in the Western world that fornication is an act to be deplored, and those who walk paths of life celebrating that act should be downright ostracized.”
“I apologize, Xander,” Mr. Stellar responded, returning to a professional tone. “I understand you have quite the social capital in San Fernando Valley. In fact, in accepting Universal’s offer, you’ve turned down a directorial position at your studio — ” avoiding the rather explicit name entirely — “correct?”
“Yes, George.” Xander considered hanging up but knew that would be an unpardonable offense. Instead, he scratched himself in silent protest. “I hope that illuminates to you how much this role means to me.”
“It really does, Xander. It really does.”
Sixth, And Break
Juliette and Xander met at the cafe during their lunch break. Xander had just finished a simple hardcore beach scene. He’d wanted to keep the rest of his filmography straightforward and fun, and although the crew wondered if this new material bordered on the polite, they understood and paid him respect. David, however, hadn’t spoken a word to Xander the entire day, and at one point it sounded as though he were crying in the bathroom. Xander had decided to leave him well enough alone.
The same blur of bodies in sportswear and suits wallpapered the scene. Juliette hovered over a black Sumatra coffee, her skin luminous under a black cross-strap top. Xander knew her well; when she wore the black cross-strap top, she was pissed. She meant business. He knew that he also had power, even if he hated to use it to disappoint her.
Juliette clapped her thighs in histrionic frustration.
“Why’d you have to disappoint everyone? It wasn’t enough to get pissy about being a ‘creative purist,’ whatever the fuck that means when you’re getting paid to eat out Abbey Brooks; you had to make David cry like an infant? Do you realize how much he’s given for you?”
Xander stayed silent. He knew she carried the burden of speaking for the entire studio, maybe the industry.
She sighed and gave him a slightly resigned look.
“When we called off the engagement, I thought it wouldn’t work out, me staying your agent. But you promised me it would, and I believed you, so I kept you. And I get that you want bigger and better. But you’re going to have to do that without me, darling. I’m not working with Hollywood-types, I’ve tried it and I hate it. They’re all fake and I’m worried a pretty good guy like you is gonna end up like the rest of them.”
Xander looked down into his drink. He’d asked the barista for “whatever” and just hoped it would be good. He’d taken a sip and liked it, but was a little disappointed there wasn’t anything drawn in foam at the surface. No graceful swan, no blossoming carnation, no placid lily. The thin, soggy string of a teabag dipped below the rim. He didn’t ask what it was called, and they didn’t tell him. Usually he did ask. It was weird for Xander to be anxious about a conversation, especially with Juliette.
He looked over to Juliette’s brown ceramic mug. Its oblong handle seemed to parallel the not-quite-elven form of her ears. She’d always seemed almost mythical to him, a perception he’d never appreciated fully until now.
“Matt,” she said, “I feel like you’re not just leaving the studio. You’re about to leave me, too. Again.”
“Only in a professional capacity,” he clarified tensely. “I’ve made a decision. The curtain’s closed on San Fernando Valley for me, and I don’t regret that. It’s just change,” he said, wondering why this felt like work to explain.
Some of the fog seemed to dissipate from Juliette’s haunted eyes.
“Only in a professional capacity, huh?”
A voice broke through the tunnel of their intimacy, the way fingers slip through the falling water from a shower head.
“Hey,” it said, “sorry, are you Xander Cherry?”
Xander looked about the cafe, expecting to find where the voice had come from. But it hadn’t come from anywhere, not anywhere.
Juliette looked at Xander another way, a new way. A way he hadn’t seen in years, and, come to think of it, never from her. The fluorescent lights of the cafe seemed to crackle with light, then they pulsed, then they throbbed. He thought about the time he’d first heard the term “money shot,” then he heard it in the voice of the first person who’d ever said it to him. Juliette was there, in front of him, but possessed. Her chocolate, wavy hair fell into blond locks, she regressed in years, she became something old and new all at once.
“Xander, I’ve seen all of your…” the voice came back and trailed off, falling into the vapor of ambient conversation around the star, the burning star, Xander Cherry.
Rainwater started to fall and cascade along the windows of the cafe, forming warped, blurry stripes along the street scene outside.
“Wow, you really are a dick to your fans, man.”
The voice took shape. The ceiling lights burst into countless shards. The room blazed, and the wax museum of customers with glass-mug cappuccinos and single-shot espressos melted like burning candles.
Xander managed to scream Juliette’s name before the familiar mask she seemed to wear slid grotesquely away, and Samantha Walsh was left there with him. She winced.
Final
“Matt?”
“Yeah. Hey, Aaron. Is Aurora there?”
“Uh, yeah, man.” He sounded a little surprised. He had every right to be, Xander thought. “You wanna talk to her?”
“Yep.”
“Sure, Matt. One minute.”
The sound of scuffling came through the speaker as Aaron handed the phone to his girlfriend. A couple of years ago, Aurora had decided she wouldn’t carry a cell phone with her; didn’t want to be like all the other millennial girls; didn’t want to just be about hooking up with cute boys and posting pictures of herself with them on Instagram and all that “basic shit,” in her words. If he wanted to talk to her (which didn’t happen often), Xander had to call Aaron and hope she’d be presently with her boyfriend. Aaron and Aurora had been going steadier and steadier since seventh grade, and he seemed like a good guy. For one thing, he was very mature for his age: if Xander was still a kid, Aaron never was.
Aurora’s wispy voice emerged from the other line.
“Hi, Matt. How’s Hollywood life?”
“It’s great, Aurora. Cameras everywhere, eating sushi off naked models, and I’ve signed four and a half pairs of breasts just this morning.”
“So nothing’s changed since San Fernando?” she asked in her traditional deadpan.
“That’s worth a guffaw, little lady,” Xander replied. “Actually, I just left Juliette and the company today. The company was surprisingly easy to quit. We did last one shoot and hugged it out.”
“And how was talking to Juliette?”
“Um,” Xander hesitated, “it went a little weird but I would say it ended kind of amicably.”
“Kind of?”
Xander took a deep sigh that also sounded a little to Aurora like moaning.
“I don’t think we’ll be talking for a bit. Breakups are never easy, Aurora, even if you try to make them work out.”
“Even if you pay her salary for years after,” Aurora continued his thought.
“Yeah.” The line went dead for a couple of seconds. “At some point, the betrayal comes. Sam used to say that if you never felt like someone’s betrayed you at some point, you might not have ever loved them.”
The silence returned for another few moments.
“I’m really sorry, Xander. You’re a good guy and I love you.”
“I love you too, Aurora. Do you have time for me to tell you about a dream I had a week ago?”
“Yeah, I’m just at Aaron’s house. On another one of those ‘picnics’ I tell my parents I’m doing with the girls. I wonder what they think of my appetite.”
“You’re a growing girl, Ori.”
“Not growing too quickly, I hope. What was your dream?”
“I’m staring down a long, beige corridor. There are fluorescent lights above me, flickering, and a door at the end that I really want to open. It’s not a very special door, but I really want to open it. I start walking and as I’m walking, my footsteps keep getting louder and the hallway starts getting wider, there start being more doors to open, and the wall keeps moving farther and farther away from me. All the walls do, and at some point I’m just standing in the middle of a parking garage with no cars. Then there are cars, and I’m just searching for my own car. I’m looking around, like where did I park it? I pull out my keys and press the ‘Panic’ button, but each siren comes from a different car. So I go after one car, then I find out I’m supposed to go somewhere else, then I go in that direction and it was the wrong choice as well, because my car is somewhere else! It’s like some kind of shitty, avant-garde symphony that I’m trapped in the middle of, and I want to get out. Then, finally, I hear Sam’s voice, and she’s calling me into a black sedan and I get in it and we drive out of the parking garage. But as we’re getting out of the garage, the car explodes — just a big blast of fire and shrapnel, and I don’t know why, I survive and she doesn’t. She’s just gone, so I see Juliette and she takes me into another car — this time it’s pink. Jules takes me into the garage outside her house, she gets out and before I manage to open the door of the car, the ceiling of the structure falls in and crushes her and the car, but I get out unscathed, I guess.”
“And then I take you into a yellow car?” Aurora asked.
Xander hesitated a moment.
“No, then I find a little rocket by the curb and I take it to space by myself.”
“So why’d you call me, Matt?”
“Because I find you, mom and dad on the moon.”
