Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

But this was the part that stirred her most:

Barrymore, 28, who starred opposite Ben Stiller in Duplex, also has a leading role in Look-Alike, to be written and directed by Spike Jonze and released in 2004.

Becca’s movie! Just that morning, Sharon phoned to say that Spike Jonze had been charmed at the table-read and wanted to put her on tape. She told Becca not to say anything to Rusty yet, and Becca read between the lines that Sharon didn’t want to get burned again. But it came to mind there was the possibility — Rusty seemingly so close to Spike, having coffees at the Rose and whatnot — that maybe he already did know and would be punishing if Becca failed to mention. No need to get paranoid; she decided to think happy thoughts. She still had the fantasy of both of them getting cast and becoming stars. The whole fame scenario flitted through her head again, this time with the capper that she became the proud new owner of the “two-story mid-century ranch” when Ms. Barrymore got the urge to relocate. One thing Becca knew she wouldn’t need was a private mod squad. Though it’d be fun to put a mannequin in there — a mannequin and a big dusty bunch of artificial flowers in the guardhouse might be memorable.

A young man interrupted her thoughts, asking if he could share the table. She blinked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But you look really familiar.”

They made a few guesses as to where they might have met before. He said, “Do you ever go to the Coffee Bean, up on Sunset?”

“Sure.”

“I used to work there.” She squinted at him. “I looked a little different. My hair was shorter. And I”—he smiled sheepishly—“I was ‘impaired.’”

He slurred his words, refreshing her memory.

“Ohmygod, yes! But — I don’t understand.”

“Research — for a film role. The Kit Lightfoot movie. I was going to play a retard. If I may be so politically incorrect.”

He reached out a hand, and Becca shook it, though she wasn’t sure how to respond. Something about him was so refined yet flamboyant that she couldn’t stop smiling.

“I’m Larry Levine. And if you’re not Drew Barrymore, you’ve got some serious explaining to do.”

Postsurgical

VIV WEMBLEY STEPS from a Suburban, deep inside the hospital garage. She wears large Fendi shades and scuffed Dries boots — straight from the airport in Van Nuys, with minimal freshening up on the plane as it landed. Sherry offered to go with her, but Viv graciously, gratefully declined. She smells her own breath as she walks, fetid and stagnant. Grief-breath.

She is ushered through the bowels, as they say, to a white room where doctors prepare her for what she will see.

A friend who is also her yoga teacher has come. The logistics of that rendezvous were a security hassle, and there’s some delay — Viv will not go in to see Kit without her — finally the two meet and embrace.

They go in a room by themselves, and the teacher engages Viv in deep yoga breaths.

They ride the elevator up.

Outside the guarded room: Prana, prana, prana.

Viv enters, the way first-timers jump from planes.

The private nurse nods, smiles, and leaves. The yoga friend stays in the room, just inside the door, now closed behind them. Respectful. Moved. There for her friend. There for Kit too.

Viv stands beside him, holding his hand. Her awkwardness melts away at the humanity of it. The reduction of love, horror, and agony. The sheer bizarre unlikelihood…

Head shaved, face twice its normal size.

“Honey?” she says, choking up. She casts a look to her friend, who quickly looks away from Kit then to Viv’s eyes, but Viv has already turned her gaze back to her fiancé so that her friend and yoga teacher missed the exchange.

“Bumpkin?”

He does not see: eyes swollen shut.

Two incisions in skull.

Tubes in nose, throat, cock.

“Baby, I’m here. It’s Viv. It’s Cherry Girl. She’s here.”

Stifles tears, certain that if she breaks down he will know. Will hear. Her yoga friend said, “Remember, he is aware.” She doesn’t want to put out any kind of fucked-up energy. No fear energy. Her yoga friend said how important it was to be calm, still, centered, comforting.

• • •

CORRESPONDENTS, IN FRONT of hospital, talk to cameras. Local news and foreign too — England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan. A distraught fan is interviewed.

• • •

A FOX NEWS lightweight talks to camera in front of the Bar Marmont. Ambitious, cadenced, sexed up by celeb tragedy. A run in her stocking the audience will never see. Camera follows as she walks to liquor store, reenacting Kit Lightfoot’s ill-fated path. Interviews clerk who ID’d plate.

• • •

SPECIAL EDITION electronic newsmagazines on the topics of Celebrity Stalking, Celebrity Worship, Celebrity Murder.

Also, special subedition electronic minimagazines on Nightclub Security, Celebrity Bodyguards, Violence Prediction.

Also, on Head Injuries, Stroke Rehab.

Also, on film insurance and bonding, and what happens when a star dies in the middle of a shoot — Natalie Wood, Brainstorm, Oliver Reed, Gladiator —even though the movie Kit Lightfoot shot has already wrapped and he is not dead.

• • •

SHE CRIES AND cries and cries. She doesn’t leave her bedroom for three days. A clot of yoginis come and go. Friends and professionals and gentle folk she doesn’t know all that well (from Kit’s sangha) stop by to cook and be of service. Her agents come. Her publicists come. Her manager and even her accountant. Finally — finally — she laughs. Then she cries like a thunderstorm and everyone cries along. There is some hilarity too, that very special kind of hilarity in extremis, and she drinks her favorite margaritas and mixes them with Vicodin and some Co-Proxamol she got in London. She takes big messy bubble baths with girlfriends. Everyone gets massages. It’s Massage Central. Sheryl Crow, Darren Aronofsky, Joely Fisher, Renée Zellweger, Helen Fielding, Paula Abdul, and naturally, Alf Lanier drop by — at overlapping times — and of course all of the Together costars. Then a parade of industry demigods until she says, Enough. (She joked that Dr. Phil would walk in next.) She has Gingher shut it down except for the inner circle. Her crew. She dances alone in her room to the Stones and Freddy Mercury, Nirvana and White Stripes. She pulls her friends in one by one, then slams the door, and they dance with her, one by one, as a goof, a poignant goof. Everybody’s sweating and crying and singing Dusty Springfield songs. She sobers up. Everybody does yoga together. Sometimes she cries in the middle of a pose. Sometimes when that happens she laughs, and then everyone laughs and then everyone cries too. When the teacher inadvertently says “corpse pose,” Viv loses it. Everyone eats pizza and Häagen-Dazs and sushi and takeout from Trader Vic’s, and they watch nothing but AMC — Bette Davis and Maureen O’Hara and Montgomery Clift and Jeff Chandler and Jennifer Jones. Then they smoke weed and watch a Britney concert and a Bangles concert and a Cher concert on DVD and then some PPV porno. What a hoot. Periodic solo retreats to the darkened bedroom, where she tries and fails at masturbation. Dares to watch CNN, awaiting taboo redundant reports of her fiancé’s relentless nonprogress. Perversely cadges on-air quasi-eulogies and career summing-ups. Alf goes to Kit’s house and finds the ring that he bought at Fred Joaillier. He brings it over. Horror.