was a woman playing a man, how much more of a departure can there be?” Julian asked.
“She wasn’t manly enough. Did you hear her voice?”
“I heard her,” said Julian.
“I could barely. Plus she wasn’t tall enough. It was so distracting.”
“Were you distracted by her height, bro?” Ashton said, nudging Julian.
“Nope.”
“Well, pardon me for expressing my opinion,” Gwen said.
Julian pointed out that he, too, was expressing his opinion.
“Yes, but I’m making an intellectual argument against her lack of quality,” Gwen said. “What are you doing?”
Julian let it go. He didn’t know what he was doing.
It was a June summer night in New York, warm, overcast, windy, a crackle in the air of three million people alive in the street. People were pushy, the way people in New York sometimes are when they’ve spent a lot of scratch on tickets and feel it’s their due to get a signature on a playbill. They stand with demanding arms out, as if they’re doing the actors a favor and not the other way around.
The petty things Gwen continued to say about the understudy irritated Julian. He stepped away, letting other men and their dates wedge between him and his date. An echo of the girl’s words continued to ring in his ears and thump in his chest. I’m dead then, good; love like ice in the hands of children …
Kyra Sedgwick came out on the arm of Kevin Bacon, her skinny, youthful actor husband. A guy in the crowd loudly made a six degrees of Kevin Bacon joke. Kevin Bacon smiled as if he wanted to deck him. A few minutes later, the only man in the cast—the beefed-up, “explosive powder keg” who played Moses Jackson—strutted out. Julian didn’t catch his actual name and didn’t care to. A few steps behind Mr. Universe, the understudy followed. Julian’s breath caught in his throat.
The barricades grunted under the heaving mob; there was shouting, Kyra, Kyra. Kevin, Kevin. Julian liked that Kevin Bacon wasn’t even in the play, yet was signing. A measure of true celebrity, Julian thought with amusement. This was some superstar shit.
Even Mr. Universe signed a few playbills. Not Julian’s understudy. She stood to the side like the last unbought maiden at an Old West wench auction. No one recognized her with the blonde wig off and her wet hair pulled into a tight bun.
It started to drizzle.
Extending his hand with the playbill in it, Julian waved it around to get her attention. How do you act like a gentleman and not an asshole when you’re waving around a thing to be signed? But when she saw him making a fool of himself, she stepped forward, all breath and grateful smile. He held out the playbill for her in the palm of his slightly shaking hand, watching the top of her wet dark head as she signed her name, large, ornate, nearly illegible, Josephine Collins with a bold flourish.
Before Julian could tell her how good she was, how astonishing, the steroid with a mouth summoned her from afar. The only thing missing was a finger snap. She fled.
And that was that.
Back in L.A., Julian almost forgot her.
Ashton’s store was as busy as ever, three of Julian’s brothers were having birthdays, Father’s Day was coming up, a baptism, his mother was hosting an end-of-school party and needed Julian’s help finding a florist and a caterer, and Gwen was hinting at a romantic getaway to Mexico for the Fourth of July, hoping perhaps for an engagement ring in Cabo.
Every once in a while, Julian remembered the girl’s first line.
Not even remembered it. He dreamed it.
In visions of blazes and icy glades, her pale face would appear lit up against the black, and from the center stage in his chest her voice would sound, asking what he was waiting for, telling him that the soul had no borders.
A FEW WEEKS LATER JULIAN RAN INTO HER AT BOOK SOUP ON Sunset. Ran into her was probably a misnomer. He was in the poetry stacks, killing time before meeting up with Ashton, and she waltzed in.
Skipping up the short stairs, she headed for the black shelves by the windows, to the film and theatre section. From his hidden vantage point, his head cocked, Julian watched her scanning the spines of the books. It was definitely the same girl, right? What a coincidence to find her here.
She had on a blonde wig in New York and cocoa hair now, swept up in a messy, falling-out bun. She was wearing denim shorts, black army boots, and a sheer plaid shirt that swung over a bright red tank top. Her legs were slender, long, untanned. No doubt. It was her.
Julian didn’t usually approach women he didn’t know in bookstores. Plus he was out of time. He glanced at his watch, as if he were actually contemplating accosting her, or perhaps looking for a reason not to. Ashton in thirty.
His insane buddy wanted to go canyoneering in Utah! Julian’s job as a friend was to talk him out of it. So Julian had gone to Book Soup to buy the memoir of the unfortunate hiker who had also gone canyoneering in Utah. The poor bastard got trapped under a boulder for five days in Blue John Canyon and had to cut off his own arm with a dull pocket knife to survive. Over lunch of spicy soft-shell crab tacos, cilantro slaw and cold beer, Julian intended to read the salient passages to Ashton about how to save a life.
But before he could get to the life-saving travel section, Julian got sidetracked by the L.A. poems of Leonard Cohen and then by the hypnotic synth-beat chorus of Cuco’s “Drown” playing on the overhead speakers.
And there she was, bouncing in.
It was almost noon. Julian had just enough time to hightail it to Melrose to meet Ashton at Gracias Madre. At lunchtime, the streets of West Hollywood pulsed with hangry drivers. The girl hadn’t even seen him. He didn’t need to be sneaky. He didn’t need to be anything. Put Leonard Cohen down, walk out the open door onto Sunset. Stroll right on out. Throw a dollar into Jenny’s jar. Jenny the blind waif loitered outside the store at lunchtime by the rack of newspapers. The homeless needed to eat, too. Walk to your car, get in, drive away.
Without traffic, it would take him seven minutes. Julian prided himself on being a punctual guy, his Tag Heuer watch set to atomic time, Hollywood’s legendary lateness insulting to him.
Julian did not walk out.
Instead, casual as all that, he ambled across the store to the sunny corner by the window until he stood behind her, Leonard Cohen’s love songs to Los Angeles clutched in his paws.
He took a breath. “Josephine?”
He figured if it wasn’t her, she wouldn’t turn around.
She
