Paullina Simons - The Tiger Catcher

“It’s no big deal.” Ashton who? Friend for how long? “So you live in New York?” he asked at the counter as they waited to pay.

“I do. Is that good or bad?” Cheerfully her dark eyes blinked at him. She was fresh faced, eager, sincere. She had a few freckles, a dimple in her small chin. There was something wonderfully animated and inviting about her open face, about her pink vivid mouth.

His car was parked by the Viper Room, a block up Sunset. “The audition is for Mountain Dew,” Josephine said as they hurried past the blind homeless Jenny, smiling as if she could see them. “But the 4:30 is for something called Paradise in the Park at the Greek Theatre. Have you heard of it? Apparently, they need a narrator for Dante and also a Beatrice.”

“Have I heard of what? Mountain Dew? Beatrice? The Greek?” Julian opened the car door for her. He’d been leasing a Volvo sedan the last couple of years. It was spotless inside.

She didn’t notice the car or the cleanliness, or if she had, didn’t care. She was starved, she said, she hadn’t eaten since the night before. He offered her a bite-sized Milky Way from the glove box, behind his seatbelt cutter, flashlight, and multi-tool—items she also ignored on the way to the chocolate. “I really need to start making some money,” she said, theatrically chewing the hard caramel. “This Milky Way tastes like it’s been there since Christmas. I’m not complaining, mind you. Mine is a beggar’s kingdom.” Flipping down the visor mirror, she took out a small bag from her hobo purse and started doing her makeup. “I didn’t know Ralph Dibny drove a Volvo.” So she did notice. She threw blue shadow over her eyes and some more shade at him. “What are you, fifty?”

“What? No—”

“Only married fifty-year-old men with kids drive Volvos.”

“That’s not true,” Julian said, “because I’m none of those things, and yet I drive one.”

“Hmm,” she said with a purr, casting him a sideways gaze. “You’re not a man ?”

Julian turned off his phone. Switched it off cold. Last thing he needed was Ashton’s scolding voice coming through the car speakers, intruding on his Technicolor daydream. He just hoped Ash wouldn’t think Julian had been in an accident. Ashton wasn’t going to take it lightly, Julian blowing off lunch and a set walkthrough at Warner.

Well, hadn’t Julian been in a kind of accident? On an unremarkable day, a nothing day, a Tuesday, he was suddenly doing remarkable, out-of-character things. Standing up his friend. Approaching strange women. Giving them rides. The open-ended nature of life was such that on any day, at any moment, this was possible. But just because the world for others was free to these possibilities didn’t mean it was thus free to Julian. He lived his comfortable life mostly without impulse and therefore without miracles. He barely even believed in miracles, as Ashton never failed to remind him.

With the traffic on Santa Monica at a standstill, Josephine got antsy, while Julian became a praying man, don’t change, red light, don’t change, please. “So what do you do, shuttle back and forth between L.A. and New York?” he asked her. “Why not move out here?” Oh, just listen to him! He gripped the wheel.

“I tried that,” Josephine said. “I couldn’t make it. I don’t mean, I couldn’t get work. I mean I couldn’t live here. Hey, can you give me a heads-up before the light changes and you start driving? I’m putting liner on the inside of my eye.” She told him that to her, L.A. always carried a vague ominous quality. At first Julian thought she was joking. L.A. ominous? Maybe some parts. Parts he didn’t visit. “I don’t feel real when I’m here,” she said. “It feels like I’m in a dream that’s about to end. Hey, Julian, remember you were supposed to give me a heads-up? I could’ve poked my eye out.”

“Sorry.” He slowed down, like now that helped. “In a dream like a dream come true?” Smooth, Jules. Real smooth.

“No,” she said. “Like a walk-on part in someone else’s acid trip.”

He wanted to make a joke but couldn’t, he was too busy praying.

A few minutes to one, he pulled up to a Paramount side gate off Gower. The guard there knew him. “Hey, C.J.,” he called out to the smiling security man.

Josephine was impressed. “You’re on a first name basis with the guard at Paramount?”

“How you doin’, Jules,” C.J. said, peering inside the Volvo. “And where’s our boy Ashton today?”

“Who’s Ashton?” Julian said with a wink.

A smirking C.J. was about to lift the gate, but Josephine leaned over Julian to flick her audition pass into the open window. Julian smelled her meadowsweet musky perfume, verbena mint soap, and the chocolate Milky Way on her breath. Pressed against the back of the driver’s seat, he inhaled her and tried not to get lightheaded—or worse.

“You’re fine, young lady,” the guard said, waving her on. “You’re with him, go on through. Do you know where you’re going?”

“Do any of us really know where we’re going, C.J.?” Josephine said cheerfully. They drove past. “Who’s Ashton?”

“My get-into-Paramount card,” Julian replied, looking for her soundstage. “Also, Warner’s, ABC, CBS, Universal, Fox. Really my get-into-life card. Run, it’s right here. Or you’ll be late.”

At the gray door to Soundstage 8 marked “Auditions,” Josephine said sheepishly, “Um, do you think you could wait? I won’t be but a minute. Five tops. I’ll buy you lunch after. As a thank you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I want to. But also”—she coughed with a beseeching smile—“maybe after I buy you lunch you could drop me off at Griffith Park? The stupid Greek Theatre is so far. And then that’s it, I promise.”

After she disappeared inside, Julian texted a rushed half-sentence apology to Ashton, switching the phone off again before he could get an outraged reply.

JOSEPHINE CAME OUT WELL OVER AN HOUR LATER, FELL INTO his Volvo, and said, “God, that took for ever .”

“Did you get the part?”

“Who knows?” She was unenthusiastic. “One of the other girls said she knew Matthew McConaughey, Mr. Mountain Dew himself. I hate her.” Said without malice. “She’s got connections. What time is it? I’m starved, but the Greek is on the other side of town. Where can we grab something quick?”

He took her across Melrose to a place called Coffee Plus Food. It was almost closing time, so they were nearly out of coffee plus food. The joint was also blissfully empty of people. It was just the two of them and the cashier, a bored, unsmiling Australian chick. They sat at a round steel table by the tall windows. Josephine tried to pay, but Julian wouldn’t let her. She ordered three sausage rolls (“I told you I was famished”), an avocado salad, a coffee, and the last morning bun on the tray after he assured her that the morning buns were not to be missed, like an attraction at Disneyland.

“I’d like to go to Disneyland someday,” she said, devouring the pastry. Even Ashton’s Riley, who ate primarily kale, allowed herself the morning bun. It was crispy and caramelly, a cinnabun mated with a croissant and glazed with crunchy sugar. “It’s like love in a bun,” Josephine said, her happy mouth sticky. She said she’d have to come back for another one before flying back home, and Julian restrained himself from asking when such a hideous flight might take place.

“What do you do, Julian?” she asked as she started on the sausage rolls. “What do you teach?”

“Nothing, why do you keep saying that?”