Reluctantly, they started back downhill. “What did you wish for?” he asked.
“Today I asked to be in Paradise in the Park so I could stay in L.A.,” she said. “How about you?”
“Me, too,” said Julian.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO NOW?”
“What do you want to do now?”
“I’m starved.”
“I know just the place.”
Hours later they were still sitting across from each other at the Griddle Cafe on Sunset at a square table on the sidewalk, hot out, cars whizzing by. Julian perked up once he got some food in him. There had been something foggy and surreal about the minute with her at the top of the mountain, the floating evanescence mixing and churning with unfathomable emotion.
Dante’s people called. The part of the narrator was hers if she wanted it. Could they send the contracts over to her agent? Could she start rehearsals the day after tomorrow? Things were looking up. She was never taking off the red beret. “But do you know what the producer said to me even as he was giving me the job?” Josephine said. “What took you so long to come out here, Miss Collins?” She stirred her coffee.
“I heard you tell him you were twenty-eight.”
“And he said exactly and hung up.”
Julian laughed. “Last month Ashton was on the phone, angling for a walk-through at CBS and the producer asked how old he was. Ashton said thirty-two, and the producer said, ‘Do you look thirty-two?’ Ashton was like, do I need to look younger than thirty-two for a set walkthrough on a cancelled sitcom?”
Josephine shook her head. “Everybody’s looking for eternal youth. Especially in this town.”
“Eternal something maybe.”
“So, is your friend a good guy?” she asked. “The truth now. Even if he is ornery and thirty-two. Should we introduce him to my Zakiyyah, see what happens?”
“Okay, Dolly, pipe down,” Julian said. “He’s not ornery. He’s taken.”
“Taken, shmaken. How attractive is his girlfriend?”
Julian took out his phone and showed her Riley.
Josephine acted unimpressed. She took out her phone and showed him Zakiyyah.
Julian acted unimpressed.
“She was Miss Brooklyn!” Josephine said.
“Riley was voted most beautiful in high school.”
“Did you not hear me say that Z was Miss Brooklyn?”
“Ashton doesn’t date beauty queens.”
“Obviously,” Josephine said, and they both laughed. “Is Riley in the business?”
Julian shook his head. “Ashton also doesn’t date actresses. He got burned a few times, and now says they can’t be trusted.”
“Really, he says that?” She eyed him with a twinkle. “What do you say?”
“I don’t know.” Julian eyed her with a twinkle. “I’ve never dated an actress.”
She fell silent, continuing to stare at Riley’s photo. “Do you like her?” she asked.
“I like her a lot, why? We’re good friends,” Julian said. “She’s wonderful entertainment. And she hates being teased.”
“And that makes you tease her all the more?”
“Naturally,” said Julian. “Every outing with her is a wellness summit. Sometimes to help me cleanse my spirit and align my chakras, she tells me to eat paper.” He couldn’t hide his genuine affection for Riley. “To rid herself of impurities, she eats on alternate days. On B days she drinks only lemon water flavored with maple syrup. She tells me to write in my newsletter that maple syrup is the perfect food and I tell her, yes, especially over waffles.”
Josephine snorted the strawberry shake through her nose.
They finished their red velvet pancakes with cream cheese frosting. Their elbows on the table, they slurped the last of the milkshakes through their straws. The tables around them were empty; only they were left.
They talked about the plays she’d been in (Danny Shapiro and his Quest for a Mystery Princess was Julian’s favorite). They talked about their favorite books (The Fight for him, Gone with the Wind for her), subjects they liked in school, comfort food, swimming pools, and then engaged in a crossfire over the Dodgers and the Yankees. (“You live here,” she said, “so maybe you have to pay lip service to this, but you do know in your heart of hearts that the Dodgers suck, right?”) After half an hour, the argument subsided unresolved. (“What, you’re offended?” she said. “That’s not a surprise, I’d be mad too if I rooted for the Dodgers.”)
They told each other their official stories. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, near the Verrazano Bridge, not quite Coney Island, not quite Bay Ridge, a small congested working-class community so removed from the rest of the world that she was ten before she set foot in New York City. She thought Luna Park on Coney Island was what all beaches looked like, and her concept of New Jersey was map-related, as in, it was a mythical place beyond Staten Island.
“New Jersey is mythical?” Julian said.
Her father ran a vaudeville joint called Sideshows by the Seashore, and she worked with him until he died, and the place changed hands. Her younger sister died of leukemia a few years later. To make her sister feel better, Josephine sang and played the piano, and her sister danced in time to her singing. She said that since then, that was how she thought of all children—in the image of frail girls dancing. Dying but dancing.
Josephine had a close but contentious relationship with her mother, less close and more contentious in recent years. Her mother worked for a private academy near their house and kept her job two decades so her daughter could go to an elite prep school for free. She wanted Josephine to attend Columbia, to become a professor, a doctor of letters. Josephine had other ideas. She got into the School of Performing Arts instead and felt vindicated—for two seconds. Then she realized she was in a school with five hundred kids just as talented as her. Someone else always danced better, sang better, recited louder. Acting was a zero-sum game, especially on stage. In middle school she’d been the unsinkable Molly Brown, the star in every play, but at Performing Arts she was barely the sidekick. After graduation it got worse. She didn’t get into Juilliard, but now competed for parts with everyone that had.
She found a steady job building stage sets at the Public Theatre while continuing to audition. Her not getting a college degree was the greatest disappointment of her mother’s life, and Julian, who knew something about disappointing mothers (and fathers), wanted to ask, even more than one of her daughters dying, but didn’t.
Julian revealed his own official story. He was raised in middle-class suburban Simi Valley, the fourth of six sons born to two teachers: Brandon Cruz, a third-generation Mexican, and Joanne Osment, a third-generation Norwegian.
The children: Brandon Jr. and Rowan, followed by Harlan, Julian, Tristan—Irish triplets, one born every ten months—and then Dalton, ten years later. His parents still lived in the same starter house they’d bought right out of college. His mother raised six kids in it while also running the guidance department at the high school, unstoppable “like a Viking.” His father had been head of the school district and was now president of a local college.