by Jim Carrey
She had come to believe Georgie didn’t love him, and she knew, deep within, that she could. She had imagined the life they could live together, and now described it, offering him her dreams like paper flowers to a volcano.
“Have you ever thought about moving to Santa Barbara? You’d like it. It’s so nice up there, I know they have water restrictions, but they’re still zoned for horses. This wig is too hot.” She was unhooking the hair clips, working her fingers beneath the cap. She pulled it off, placed it on the bed. Her real hair was tawny brown, a pixie cut. He stared at it with jagged horror, seeing her no more as an escape from his being but as another of its menaces, a frightened, broken child arrived here in his bed with dreams wanting financing, either with his dollars or his days, and not a milligram of birth control between them. He was quiet, scanning the seconds for exits.
“I love you,” she dared; dangerous words in this place.
“Jesus Christ,” said Carrey, realizing the scope of her delusion. Best to be very clear. Then, with crushing softness, “Love doesn’t play any part in this, honey.”
“Not with her, it doesn’t. She doesn’t love you.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Georgie. You can tell just by watching.”
“Don’t bring her into this.”
“She brought me into this.”
“We’ve already broken the rules, Helena. Please…”
And in a voice suggesting that the meek shall inherit nothing more than their own pain, she protested, “That’s not my name.”
His phone vibrated on the ottoman; their eyes raced to its glowing surface, and each saw that the caller was Georgie. Carrey took the phone, walking into the hallway. Celeste listening as they talked, his voice suddenly tender. Then she turned and saw herself in the plate-glass bedroom windows, striking herself, again, not as a lost person, or a person in pain, but as the star of a film. It was okay. There were millions watching, she felt it, it was all being guided by a narrative hand that wouldn’t have brought her here or given her this magical wardrobe change for nothing. Crying at cosmic benevolence, she realized this was the scene where she’d prove her love by showing that she couldn’t live without him. Where he’d realize he loved her—
Carrey ended his call, and rather than return to the girl in the bedroom decided he could do with a shower. He’d get her a car, suggest she leave in the gentlest tones, he decided, running the water. He’d find the words to give her a soft landing, tell her it was no one’s fault. Eventually, if necessary, he could change his cell-phone number, her texts would go to whatever lucky lotto winner received the old one. He toweled himself dry, stood at the vanity mirror applying his nightly beauty regimen, a twenty-minute production: eyebrows trimmed, bronzer dabbed, pimples concealed. Finally, putting on a friendly smile, he reentered the bedroom to find his prescription bottles emptied out on the nightstands, and Celeste’s eyes rolling back in her head as she seizured on the bed, bloody saliva running from her mouth into the platinum wig, the act, at last, complete: she was a perfect Monroe bleeding final dreams into the Brentwood night.
* * *
—
At the Palm Springs JW Marriott, Georgie booked herself a Pilates class for the next morning, wanting to show up with full energy for Tarantino.
Her face had felt hot, a little puffy, after the injections. Her cheeks and forehead were flushed, but she ascribed that to the dry desert air. She slept with a cold gel mask on, cucumbers chilling in the fridge for the morning. Then she woke to find herself joined to an unenviable and, at that point, undiscovered demographic: the one person in ten thousand who exhibits a massive negative response to Vividerm.
Her face, her very instrument, was transformed into something like a rain-soaked catcher’s glove. There was bruising and swelling where the needles had pricked her. And a general palsying about her mouth, her cheeks, her eyelids, one drooping, the flesh like cheap plastic, unable to convey any trace of emotion into the world. Not of her horror. Or of the guilt. That she had done this, was now more trapped than ever in the self which, with this audition, she had been hoping to transcend.
She called Mendel. They had a screaming match, and an uneven one, as Georgie, all bruised, felt pain in speaking, and the dermatologist was, in his own eyes, an artist beyond reproach.
“You said there would be no reaction.”
“I said it was totally natural.”
“You said it was better than Restylane.”
“For most it is.”
“Not for me.”
“Well, then you should have stayed with Restylane.”
“Fuck you.”
“Pardon?”
“You fucker.”
She raced to CVS and bought cortisone, Benadryl. But the pills just made her sleepy, and they did nothing against the Vividerm. It was in there, deep down, setting off a flood of histamines.
Her lunch with Tarantino was set for 2:00 p.m.; she called to try and push it back a day. His assistant said he was leaving for Washington to scout locations in the morning and warned that he’d cleared a full afternoon for her, that he rarely did this and took his time very seriously.
She couldn’t let this get away.
He was staying in a suite at the Ace Hotel. She drove there panicked, cursing herself for being so easily suckered, her mother’s voice rising now from her lips, berating her, Of course you fucked it up, you fuck up everything. She moved the sun visor to hide herself from other drivers, berating turning to self-help as the hotel approached, her own voice now assuring her, You can do this, he’s an artist, he’ll understand. He’d taken suites by the pool, was there with his casting agent and a personal assistant, a young blonde who lost her artificial grin as, seeing Georgie, she gasped with raw fear of contagion.
“I’m having a reaction,” Georgie mumbled.
“No! You look great!” the girl replied, with counterfeit warmth, taking her out by the pool to a table bearing muffins and croissants, coffee and tea, an HD camera.
Beyond it, reclining in a lounge chair set toward the sun, was Quentin Tarantino, making explosion noises and giggling as he flew a drone low over the pool, buzzing the spa-goers and watching their reactions in real time on his laptop.
“Quentin,” said the assistant. “Quentin!”
He landed the drone, then turned, straining to see Georgie as she approached.
The sun was behind her, she came into view only gradually, so that she became, across the seconds, a figure of mystery. Then he saw it: the bruised face, swollen and glossy with cortisone, fixed at all emoting centers, transmitting none of the pathos he’d fallen for on Oksana. He realized what it was—a plastic surgery mishap worthy of tabloid commemoration. He’d seen it before. What was it that made people do this? He pondered this question as they bridged the moment with formalities, taking delivery of green juices, each praising the calming desert air. But her eyes followed his as he studied her skin, looking for the exact points of injection. Part of her hoped it all might work for his envisioned fight scenes. Part of her noted how his belly tested the buttons of his shirt, thinking it total bullshit that a man could get away with that.
“So, you wanna read?”
“Sure,” she managed.
“Carly, can we get her the pages?”
He looked to the camera on the table, picked it up, pressed RECORD, and held Georgie in the frame as the assistant brought them scripts.
Tarantino said, “Let’s go to page seventy-two. Siege of the Treasury.”
She flipped through the script, came to a page filled with capitalized carnage, the words almost attacking her from the paper: DECAPITATED, DISEMBOWELED, SKINNED ALIVE, FACE CLAWED OFF. The Benadryl was hitting her hard. She struggled to remember her character’s name, then even to find the lines.
Quentin had the handheld camera rolling, red light agl
ow, moving it across the tray of pastries. She considered her face going viral, a mudslide of views and clicks burying everything she’d done in her life up until that moment. It had taken all her wiles, all her cunning, to claw her way to this lowly perch. She couldn’t contemplate the rainforest floor.
She felt a sudden vertigo, a falling, as Tarantino directed—
“Keep it grounded. But remember. This bitch is hackin’ dicks off.”
Georgie looked down to the page, saw the character’s name—Lilith.
Quentin read the action: “Interior. Night. U.S. Treasury. Lilith rushes past the printing presses, Uzi blasting, throwing grenades. She’s vengeance and velocity, shooting up the guards. Their blood sprays across the sheets of money, tens, twenties, hundreds.”
“I like this,” said Georgie, appalled to hear her own mumbling, knowing it was all being written into silicon forever.
“She makes it into the office of Treasury Secretary Saperstein,” said Tarantino, then pushed the camera right up in her face. “Okay, now read.”
Georgie looked down, seeing the name: Treasury Secretary Saperstein.
Her face wasn’t totally paralyzed, more swollen and drugged. But this—this was a tough one under any circumstances. Her eyes raced ahead. Flowing pages of Tarantinian genius, vindication, quotes from scripture, predeath bons mots. These were the lines and this was the role she’d dreamed of, that she’d lived for. And yet she couldn’t make it past this horrible motherfucker’s S-heavy name—
“Thhheck-wa-tawwy…”
Tarantino zoomed closer, half grinning. Power through, she told herself.
“Thhheck-way-tawwy…”
She took a drink of her green juice, trying to pass this all off as a dryness of the throat, a very normal actor’s challenge. She tried again, no use. Her lips were in full mutiny. And then it got worse; she felt the green juice trickle down her chin, saw Tarantino’s eyes follow it down onto her linen blouse. Los Angeles is a city of lucid dreams, built on a desert, illuminated by wonders but plagued by fears of sudden erasure. And these now overwhelmed her.
She broke into tears.
Tarantino passed his napkin.
“Truth is, I’m still figuring out what I want to do with this part,” he said.
He turned to his young assistant, flashing a grimace across his well-creased, middle-aged face, one the assistant knew meant Show her the door.
Then, back to Georgie: “You got a lotta heart.”
She went to the hotel and packed her things. Drove home two hours through the desert, wanting Jim’s arms, needing him to tell her it all would be okay.
* * *
—
She’d later remember that the house had been too tidy. The bathroom was indictingly immaculate, no toothpaste on the sink, fresh hand towels on the rack. And the bedsheets, usually only changed on Wednesdays, were freshly cleaned and pressed. Housekeepers on the weekend? Never. Then, in the hallway, she saw a twinkling speck on the rug. She leaned down, picked it up: a glittery acrylic fingernail, a tiny talon, cotton-candy pink.
Half filled with hope, half with dread, she went into the office off the kitchen, locking the door behind her. Sat down at the desktop. Saw the software icon for Brentwood Home Security Systems, clicked on it. Inside were folders storing video feeds of the past days. She fast-forwarded through the footage of the Hummingbird Road gate.
Hours and hours of it.
Then a woman’s figure came into grainy form.
Pause. Zoom.
She saw that it was her chosen sex doll, Helena San Vicente.
The gates swung open.
She watched the young Monroe impersonator enter.
Switched to the foyer camera.
Saw Carrey grabbing her, the lusty meeting, their disappearance into the master suite. She sped across the hours, then slowed as the street-facing cameras flooded with ambulance lights. Paramedics rushed inside the house. A space of dead minutes. Then out came Helena, body jostling on the gurney as they carried her into the ambulance, limp flesh flaring green in the night-vision camera.
But this tryst wasn’t so surprising to Georgie, and it wasn’t the sight of a girl on a gurney that most horrified her. It was the speed and the ease with which a life could be consumed here, the acid realization that she was, herself, already at some point along the way in this process. That her dreams would not come true here.
She stepped out into the living room to see him in the flesh.
He flashed her his trademark genial grin, but his puffy eyes betrayed him. Then he burrowed back into his hot-fudge sundae and the afternoon’s viewing, a History Channel documentary, Mysteries of Atlantis. The narrator described a set of ultrapowerful crystal orbs thought to have given the ancient Atlanteans access to nearly limitless energy and also, most appealingly, supernatural powers. A group of explorers believed that erratic electromagnetic readings suggested these power spheres were located in a trench off the Greek island of Santorini, but couldn’t afford the advanced submarines required to recover them. Watching, Carrey wondered: Was all his previous stardom just preparation for some greater spiritual-historical role? Was the cosmos speaking to him through the television? Presenting him with his true fate—something far beyond make-believe?
He loaded up a spoonful of vanilla ice cream, twisted a slick of fudge around it, then poked at a maraschino cherry for a bit before losing patience and plowing the spoon into his craw. Sweet sugar settling over him, he resumed his wonderings.
Was the cosmos tasking him with using his personal fortune to recover the power spheres of Atlantis from the deeps off Santorini? The power spheres, said the narrator, may have lifted the Atlanteans from their craggy island into realms of pure energy. They didn’t die; no, they became eternals. Light Beings. Would that happen to him, once he led his recovery team? What a relief. At last, he’d be free from the burden of becoming. He’d be pure energy, shining out into forever. He couldn’t wait to crew up and was scrolling through his contacts for Philippe Cousteau’s number when his phone vibrated with arriving emails, the surveillance files, sent to him by Georgie, with herself cc’d. Didn’t notice her standing in the hallway. He looked up at her bruised, swollen face, his eyes popping.
“What happened?”
“You’re asking me what happened?”
“Huh?”
“I’ll tell you what happened to my face if you tell me what happened to your fuck-toy.”
“What fuck-toy?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Honey, we should call you a doctor.”
“Check your fucking emails, Mao.”
He unlocked his phone, saw the newly arrived files, opened them—
Saw Helena on the gurney. Felt his earlobes burning, felt, within him, the Parliament of his Mind split into a Victim Front, which charged Georgie with bringing the crazy girl into their lives in the first place, and a Catholic Shame Party, which told him he’d committed sins of the flesh, nearly destroyed all he’d built, that he must repent or meet the Lake of Fire. And each agreed on his first words, which were:
“She’s okay. She didn’t die. She—”
“Ha,” said Georgie. “Then that makes it all okay.”
Now the Victim Front rose up, refusing to take this taunting, needing to make certain things very clear. “You’re the one who found her!”
“Excuse me?” Part of her had been expecting an apology.
“You brought her into our home. You set up the rules you knew I’d break.”
She sensed that this might have been true, and grinned in sensing, also, that the point no longer mattered, it would never need settling.
“You fucking set me up!”
“You won’t need to bear my treacheries anymore.”
“Georgie, I’m sorry…”
“Don’t
be sorry.” She walked toward him, took his shaking head in her hands, stroked his hair like he was a child on the first day of kindergarten as she explained, “I’m gonna give you a better deal than you’d get with any lawyer. And I hope you’re smart enough to take it.”
She patted him on the cheek, then walked from the room. He followed her out to the foyer and watched, throat dry in surrender, as she disarmed the house alarm, then lifted the Frida Kahlo self-portrait from its place above the piano.
“Vividerm,” she said.
“Huh?”
“It’s what happened to my face. See? I keep my end of things.”
Then she carried the painting out the door, laid it in the trunk of Jim’s silver Porsche, and pulled out of the driveway. She went to the Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica, booked herself a room with an ocean view. There, sitting out on the small balcony, with Frida as her company on the patio chair opposite, she sipped a dry rosé and thought of all the bright days to come.
CHAPTER 10
That week, as the tabloids ran news of Jim and Georgie’s split, Carrey, Wink Mingus, and Al Spielman II gathered on the Hummingbird estate’s back patio to discuss the various crises now facing them: a public split with Georgie and the rumor of a scandalous affair, a deep insult to the Walt Disney corporation, and—only recently learned—the growing concern of certain high-ranking persons in Beijing.
Wink Mingus carried two hundred pounds of warrior muscle on his six-foot-seven frame. He’d worn his hair in a greased ponytail since his days as a Green Beret sowing havoc across Central America in the 1980s. There he’d commanded his men to paint the Panamanian dead as human voodoo dolls, had dropped them into the Vatican embassy courtyard from helicopters to scare out General Manuel Noriega after George H. W. Bush, with classic American whimsy, had changed his designation from puppet to pariah.
But combat trauma had left his nerves frayed. His left eye blinked uncontrollably, leading many lunch partners to wrongly feel he was letting them in on special secrets, and earning him the nickname Wink, which generally delighted him; he’d never much liked being an Eddie.
