Paullina Simons - The Tiger Catcher

“I thought you were hungry,” Julian blurted. “What do you feel like eating? We can go anywhere. My treat. I may not know about Vietnam movies, but I know my L.A. food. Are you in the mood for a taco? Factor’s on Pico? A pizza? Marie Callender’s coconut pie?”

Her mouth twisted as she struggled with some internal thing. “Don’t think I’m nuts,” Josephine finally said. “But I feel like breakfast for dinner. Hash browns?”

“I know just the place. Best hash browns in L.A.”

“Am I dressed for it?”

“For IHOP? Absolutely.” Julian opened the passenger door.

“You know what they say,” she said, getting in. “When the guy opens the door for you, either the girl is new, or the car is new.”

“Ha,” Julian said. The girl was new.

“So who do you stay with when you’re in L.A.?” he asked. They were sitting across from each other, their second plate of hash browns half eaten between them on the blue table.

“My friend Z.”

Did Julian dare ask if Z was a Zoe or a Zachary? He dared. “Who’s Z?”

“My best friend Zakiyyah.”

“Ah.” An exhale. “Is she in the business, too?”

“She used to be.” Josephine drummed her fork against the table. IHOP on Sunset was empty, because what kind of fool came to IHOP at night.

“What’s her actual name?”

“Zakiyyah Job. Job as in Bible, not employment. And Zakiyyah like pariah.”

“You two have incredible stage names. You’re lucky.”

“You should talk, Julian Cruz ,” she said. “Anyway, Z is lucky. Jury’s still out on me. Seven years ago, we moved out west, paradise is here, the whole thing. We set up house, started going to auditions. I thought we’d be all right—me being white and her being black and all—but with colorblind casting, the agents were bending over themselves to hire her, not me. Sometimes she was better. Sometimes I was better. It was hard to tell, because she always got the part, and it got between us.” She sighed. “One of us had to choose a different life if we were to stay friends. So we flipped for it.”

“I should think,” Julian said, “that first you’d want to flip on whether or not you wanted to stay friends.”

“Nah. We’re from the same hood. Z is like my sister.”

Julian knew something about flipping for it. When they first met Gwen and Riley, he and Ashton flipped for Gwen. Because tall, gorgeous, California girl-next-door Riley with glossy blonde hair and glowing skin looked too high-end for mortal man, even Ashton, who was no slouch himself in the looks department. Ashton said that no one who was that put-together on a Wednesday night happy hour at a local dive in Santa Monica would ever be easy on a man’s life. She looked and moved like a movie star. And Gwen looked like the movie star’s best friend. So they flipped for Gwen. Ashton lost. That was shocking. Because Ashton never lost anything.

“I was pretty confident,” Josephine continued, “because I never lose a coin toss or even a game of rock, paper, scissors. But Z won. I said, let’s play best of five. She won again. I said, best of seven. She won that, too.”

“Was this major life decision fueled by tequila by any chance?”

“A whole bottle full.”

“Thought so.”

“She won every time. Finally I said, okay, one last time, winner take all, sudden death. We fortified ourselves with the rest of the tequila. And guess what happened?”

“You won?”

“Why,” she said with a half-smile full of whimsy, “because you believe in the Willy Wonka philosophy on lotteries and life in general?”

Julian laughed. “I do, actually. You stand a better chance if you want it more.”

Josephine nodded in deep agreement. “And no one wanted it more than me. Yet I still lost. Sometimes, no matter how much you want it, you still lose.” She didn’t look upset, just philosophical. “After I threw up and calmed down, Z told me I could have it. She would become something else.”

Julian was impressed. After he won, he did not give dibs on Gwen to Ashton. “Why would she do that?”

“She said because ever since I was old enough to recite ‘Three Blind Mice,’ I stood on every table,” Josephine said. “I invented a stage everywhere I went.” She fell silent, poking the remains of the cold potatoes. “Of course, now Z is doing fantastic, and I’m still waiting for my big break.” Zakiyyah was an art therapist for the California public school system. She traveled to districts around the state and trained elementary-school art teachers how to apply their craft to the Special Ed curriculum to help troubled kids who could not be reached by conventional therapy methods. Julian thought Zakiyyah’s newfound career was an ocean away from the stage. One job: me, me, me. The other: you, you, you. How did one make a quantum leap like that?

“Why do I plow on, you ask?”

“I didn’t ask. I know why,” Julian said. “Because the theatre is all there is.” His throat tightened.

“Yes!” Josephine exclaimed, her bright eyes gleaming. “It’s not so much a career as a sickness. You gotta love it, otherwise there’s no good reason for being obsessed with something that offers rewards to so few.”

Julian agreed. “That’s good advice for many things, not just the theatre,” he said. “But you’ll get there.” He wanted to tell her that he had never in his life felt what he felt when she stood in front of him on the darkened stage at the Cherry Lane. Oh where is it, where has it all gone, my past, when I was young . “Besides, if it’s what you do, and you can do it, then you do it.” Julian set his jaw. “Because sometimes, you can’t do it. And then, there’s nothing worse.”

Josephine mined his face. “You know something about that?”

“Little bit. The irony is,” Julian said with a thin smile, “that after all that drinking and coin tossing, you didn’t stay in L.A. and your friend did.”

“That’s true. We came here together, and she, who said she couldn’t stand the constant sun and the fake life chose to stay, and I, who loved both, returned home instead.”

“Why didn’t you stay?”

“I told you, I couldn’t live here,” Josephine said. “Though of course, I didn’t know that when we flipped for it.”

“That’s the time shift paradox.” Julian was trying to find something to say to make her feel better. She looked as if she needed it. “The hindsight paradox. You can’t act on what you do not know and cannot know.”

“No, I’m fibbing, I knew it,” the young beauty said, her doleful voice echoing in the empty restaurant. “I felt it in my soul. I thought the heaviness inside me was because of tension between me and Z. It was only after she went back to school and I kept going to auditions and yet the pervasive sense of doom wouldn’t lift that I realized it wasn’t me and Z that was wrong. It was me and L.A. that was wrong.” Breezily she waved her hand around, la-di-da. “So six years ago I returned to the absurd delights of the New York stage life.” She smiled. “Every few months I fly out here, try out for a few things so I can keep my SAG membership. I visit my friend and get away from the theatre to see if I can live without it. And I can’t. I fly out to L.A.,” Josephine said, “so I can know who I am.”

NORMANDIE AVENUE WHERE ZAKIYYAH LIVED WAS POORLY lit. The residential through street lined with tall scraggly palms and working-class homes was wide but sketchy.

“It’s all she can afford,” Josephine said.

“I said nothing.” A moment later: “Is it safe?”

“Well, it’s not as safe as your Volvo, but what is?”