Janine Armin - Toronto Noir

He wants me to go to this party in a science museum, a fundraiser for stem cell research. I told him I don’t believe in using unborn babies to cure varicose veins. So he said I didn’t have to pay to go, they only want me there for PR, so I wouldn’t really be supporting anything I didn’t believe in if I wasn’t paying. That’s Jayson logic.

I mean, I know I don’t act all Christian, but I do love Jesus and babies. And my parents would kill me. So Jayson says, “SharLynn Kashante Jefferson is going,” like that is supposed to make me all jealous or nervous or scared. SharLynn is okay. She’s nice and, okay, she is pretty, but come on — she’s on a stupid hospital show, with, like, four other black girls. And, I mean, really, only my father watches hospital shows.

So I told Jayson to fuck off. It just came out. Fuck. Off . Now he probably thinks I hate SharLynn, or that I’m racist. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. I mean, I don’t think they even get her show on TV up here.

He will be so proud of me when I tell him what I did. He says I have depths inside me, strengths and energies and powers I don’t even know about yet. He says I am all diamonds inside.

September 6

Worst breakfast press conference of my life.

I felt like this tree, this skinny, dry tree, like the kind that used to grow in the back of our first house, behind the gravel pile. Garbage trees, skunk wood, Dad used to call them. You just cut that kind of tree down because it’s no use. It’s a weed with pretensions, Dad said. So you cut it down.

That’s the way they treated me. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. One guy from France asked me about Iraq , if Pulsar Girl could stop the war (!!!!). Like I’ve been to Iraq, or even Europe. So that’s all I could think to say: “Never been there.” They laughed, mean laughs. Jayson just sat there. He said his microphone wasn’t working. He fucking lies so much. Every word.

I lit all the foxglove-scented candles he sent and turned on Canadian MTV — which is, of course, in French, but at least the music is American — and I got in the bathtub and filled it really slow. He says foxglove is a medicine flower and the Irish call it Dead Man’s Thimbles. Doesn’t sound all that healthy to me, but he’s the expert.

We connect over things like that. I mean, he’s an expert in old things, in legends and stories, and I’m an expert in acting. The first time he wrote to me, I have to admit my Creepy Guy Radar went off a bit, because his handwriting was so girly. But I kept reading (because, okay, I was bored on the set), and he wrote that he thought All the Nice Girls was really a remake of the Story of Rachel and Leah, who are sisters in the Jewish part of the Bible. I looked it up.

I really am a lot like Leah, the “barren” woman, which I think means she was deaf. I mean, I’m not deaf, but I do sort of drift off a lot, and I am “tender-eyed” too, like the Bible calls Leah. I have a good heart, and I’m way, way too nice. And I’ve been overlooked all my life.

He’s coming.

[The remainder of the paragraph is illegible. Forensic textile experts hired by the Sun believe the page was scraped with a nail file or the blade of a sewing scissor.]

Now it’s 7:30 and Jayson was supposed to be here at 7 to pick me up. Another hospital party, for kids with bone cancer, or inside-out organs or bugs in their blood — something gross, it’s always something gross.

I will not hug the really messed-up ones. I told Jayson — no hugging and wipes, bring sterile wipes. He never listens.

This afternoon he was in here, going over my dresses for tonight, and I turned away to look out the window because A) I didn’t want to look at him because I hate him, and B) because there was this beautiful red bird on the window ledge. Bright red, and big, big as a cat.

Jayson said it was a Pope bird or a Thorny Cross bird, or another churchy name, like he knows anything, and after it flew away (actually, it really just sort of fell off the ledge, I hope it’s okay!!! ), I caught Jayson fucking around with my phone, my private phone with all my addresses and numbers.

I said, “What are you doing?” and he clicked it shut like it was nothing to invade my privacy. He said he thought it was his phone, no bigs. But his phone is blue, and mine is tangerine. Jayson wonders why I don’t trust him.

I’ve decided I don’t care that I don’t know what he looks like.

Well, okay, I care a little, and I have an imagination, because I’m an actor — but if he’s really ugly or old I really don’t care.

I’ve met every good-looking man in the world in the last year and the big secret is all good-looking men are exactly the same . They’re like men’s dress-up shoes: They come in black or they come in brown, they have pointy ends or they have square ends, and that’s that for choices.

I’m so bored with “beauty.” I can look at any big actor now and I can tell you in ten seconds which trainer he uses, which diet he’s on, where he gets his facials, who fills his pecs with saline, or his dick. It’s like math, like algebra — squats plus tensor bar plus Nevada mud bath plus coffee enema three times a week equals one shower scene in your next movie. Do the same math five times and eat raw lamb for twelve days and you get a sex scene too.

I mean, if I can figure this out after two movies and one season on 7th Heaven, when I was like nine, why can’t the public figure it out? It’s amazing that people don’t just start shooting celebrities, just for fun, just to see how quickly the producers can grow a new one, like starfish legs.

I don’t think I’m unreplaceable . I don’t think I’m special , or like a part of history. No fucking way am I doing “art.”

Maybe college would be fun. I’d like to get drunk and throw up all over myself on a cute guy’s front lawn, like my friends back home do every weekend. Nobody worries that they’re “out of control.” It’s totally expected, totally acceptable behavior . I mean, Jayson even took the mini-bar key. “It looks better,” he said.

Better to who? The maid? Jayson is so controlling. And I pay him for it . That’s fucked.

He told me his name today.

Okay, it can’t be his real name, probably, but it’s still a name .

Azrael .

He said it was Jewish for, “He who makes the lasting peace.”

It’s beautiful, even if it is fake. Fake and beautiful are the same thing anyway.

Twenty-nine hours till he arrives. I’m excited, more than I should be. I should be excited about, like, one hundred other things in my life, but he’s the only mystery I have left. Once you’ve spent seventeen hours hanging from a green wire pretending to be scared of the end of a mop that’s supposed to be a giant lizard alien head, most of the surprises are gone out of life.

I mean, I could get pregnant, that would be new. That would be news too. Brianna and Azrael. What would the tabloids call us? Braz? Anra? Briel? Brianna and Azrael. Brianna and Azrael.

Please, God. Please, God, let him be cute . At least cute.

No, forget it. Sorry, God, scratch that. I am such a C-U-Next-Tuesday. I don’t care. Azrael can have three heads and a harelip on all three mouths. He’s a listener . My listener.

“He who makes the lasting peace.”

Ten minutes would be enough for me.

Fuck, Jayson’s here, at ten to 8:00. Nice and late. Off we go to pet the zombie kids. I wish I had some gloves — those long kind, up to the elbows. I could pretend it’s part of my outfit.

September 7