Kathy said “like” a lot. To the point that it made you want to throw yourself off a cliff. That was her scariest quality. All at once, I spotted Dana behind her. (Speak of the… Devil. No. Speak of the Divine? The Ditzy? Whatever.) At Kathy’s heel—like a dog. If you’re keeping track at home, Dana hadn’t said one word to me all day, which was fine, but I was kind of worried about what she would do. Like with a bomb of the nuclear variety being dropped, I was waiting for the fallout.
“What are you doing?” Dana whispered.
I thought, To me?
“Be nice,” Kathy whispered back, and smiled.
I didn’t understand why they whispered. I could hear them just fine. They were drunk.
“I still can’t get over the fact that you get to go to the set and hang out with her for real,” Kathy said.
“It’s really not that big a deal. You can hang out with her too. She’s in the cave.”
“Oh, Lauren, she’s a celebrity,” Kathy grumbled.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s Laura.”
“Lauren, I have to ask… I mean, I know why you didn’t choose me.” She was now speaking too loudly, slurring her words a little. Her face was sweaty. “I mean, I, like, have major talent that would, like, outshine you tremendously. But have to ask, why didn’t you choose your best friend here?” She reached back and grabbed Dana’s hand.
“She’s not my best friend,” I said, my eyes on Dana.
“The feeling is mutual,” Dana said, then hiccuped.
“Okay,” Kathy said, shrugging. “What about Max? You two are attached at the hip?”
“Not his scene.”
“But you invited your stepbrother. Why? Come on, Lauren.”
“It’s Laura.”
“Terrence hates you,” Dana said. “You’re his stepsister, not his friend.”
I walked away. I wasn’t going to cry. I felt like crying. But I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. Ugh. I hated Kathy Baker and Dana Cobb. Best to lose myself in the party. I roamed, looking for Max, but nobody could help me. It was hard for them to put two words together, let alone a sentence. I felt a hand clamp on my shoulder and whirled around.
It was Terrence. He wasn’t alone.
“Laura, Laura, this is Freddy,” Terrence said, and there was Freddy White. The Freddy White. AHHHHHH!!! He’s so dreamy. He smiled all the way from his mouth to his eyes, which sparkled when he talked. He was a pretty boy just like all the other actors but he seemed genuinely nice and down to earth. I wanted to be his friend. I loved him in Prime Crime. He played the sidekick to Johnny Lee Grafton’s character. Freddy White always played the sidekick. In Eve of Destruction, he’d be playing the sidekick too, no doubt. He’d probably be among the first to go.
“It’s so nice to meet you. Big fan. Like, big fan,” I said. My God, I sounded like an idiot. I shook his hand. Terrible idea, as mine was clammy.
“Nice to meet you too,” he said. He looked puzzled. I couldn’t blame him. My behavior wasn’t that of a normal human being.
“She’s my stepsister,” Terrence said.
“Really?” he asked, eyeing me and then Terrence.
“It’s true,” I said.
“How’s that working out?” he asked with just a brief hint of a smile.
“About as well as the plot of your movie,” Terrence muttered. “Heading toward disaster but never quite getting there.”
I laughed in spite of myself. Freddy smirked. “Oh, we’ll get there in the movie,” he said. “Haven’t you heard? It’s this year’s WarGames—minus the creepy computer named Joshua. But even better! See, the bomb actually goes off in Eve of Destruction. Oops. I probably wasn’t supposed to give away the ending.” He sighed. “You know Hollywood—pick a subject and make the same movie over and over until they run out of ideas.”
Now Terrence was looking at him with the same I have a crush fawn eyes. “Aren’t you worried about getting fired for talking like that?” he asked.
“But this one is actually based on a book,” I protested. “It’s not…” My voice trailed off. Would Freddy White think I was a dork now? Had I just ruined this moment?
“That’s why I took the part,” Freddy said. He smiled at me. “I love that book. It’s one of my favorites.”
I smiled back, forgetting Terrence was even on the same planet. “Mine too,” I said.
“Scaring humans on a regular basis is a healthy thing to do,” Freddy added. “Especially in Hollywood.”
I got the feeling he didn’t like being an actor at all. Then again, if I had to deal with people like Astrid Ogilvie all day, I couldn’t blame him.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
He lifted his shoulders and raised his eyebrows. The gesture read loud and clear: Who the hell knows? “Scared people are more honest,” he said. “Fear cuts to the chase. It saves time.”
I nodded. “Just like Boudreaux Beauchamp wrote in Eve: ‘Short time to live…’”
“‘Long time to die,’” he quoted with me in unison.
My crush was growing by the minute.
In keeping with the End of Days, however, somebody chose that moment to put 1999[37] on Max’s boom box. Whoever it was cranked the volume to ten. People were drunk, so they started dancing. Funny how Max’s parties felt like the same movie over and over. Except that now we had real live movie stars. I wanted to dance with Freddy.
The feeling wasn’t mutual. He took the opportunity to wave goodbye to Terrence and me. I couldn’t ask him to stay. I was Laura Nobody from Griffin Flat, and he was the Freddy White. Also, conversation was no longer possible over distorted Prince and the excited shrieking of our town’s brain-dead. I could only wave back as he turned and disappeared into the night.
After that, I relented and gave into Max’s demand to dip into his private stash of moonshine. His family kept it in the basement. The music sounded muffled from down here. The air was still and dank. Max was all business, eyes roving over shelves of mason jars, squinting in the low light of a single bulb. Each one was dated.
“Circa 1962. Seems appropriate since we’re on the edge of nuclear annihilation,” I said.
“It’s a movie. Not real life,” he said.
“When did you get so smart?” I asked.
He plucked the 1963 jar from the shelf and unscrewed the cap. I caught a whiff of that horrible antiseptic smell, like a hospital. Fitting, as we could very easily end up there after drinking this stuff. “I’ve always been smart,” he said, taking a sip and then wincing. “It burns—literally my esophagus.”
I took the jar.
“How was Thanksgiving?” Max asked.
Bracing myself, I swallowed a gulp of the fiery clear liquid. It did burn. But then my belly felt warm. I shrugged. Ah, Turkey Day. Mom, Dennis, me, plus Granny and new Grandmother and Pops, made it quite the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner[38] sequel. Highlights included: a racial slur, a senile-old-woman reference, an abundance of profanity, a discussion over the FEMA pamphlet that was put on our doorstep (which turned into bickering over politics), running out of alcohol. “It could have been worse, I guess,” I said.
“Really?”
I took another sip. It went down easier this tip. “Anything can be worse, Max.
38
It’s a 1967 major motion picture drama starring Katharine Houghton, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy. In the film, a daughter brings home her black fiancé to meet her parents, who are white.