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From the moment Hannah stumbled her way out of the kitchen, she had two thoughts. One was that she needed to be lying in bed, her comforter pulled up to her neck; the other was that she needed to be nude when she was doing it.
She wasn’t a sexual person. She just liked the gentle chill of a high thread count over her skin, warming up quickly into something cozy. Like a microwave burrito.
Hannah imagined how difficult it was going to be to remove her hose. It was one thing to pull them down to pee, but getting them off her toes was not the kind of activity she should be performing in her condition, lest she break something.
She lurched forward on instinct, for the door. She had taken the subway here to this Williamsburg party with her date, so she wouldn’t have to worry about driving. The train wouldn’t be ideal, but she once watched someone step out between the trains and empty his stomach onto the tracks. When he emerged, he seemed much better. She planned to do the same.
Wait! She had a date!
Eh, fuck that guy. He’d abandoned her to hook up with America’s sweetheart. Hannah wasn’t looking into hooking up with anyone, and she was in no condition to say yes anyway. She wasn’t even sure how she ended up here.
***
She first saw him at the International Bar, through the mirror, closing in at a slow saunter. No, no, no, the International wasn’t a pick-up bar. It was one health code violation away from being napalmed into oblivion. They didn’t even have taps. Everything was in a bottle, and it was only that rancid IPA, Phil McCracken. The restrooms weren’t even big enough for the sinks, of which there was one, around the corner.
Hopefully, Dan the Bartender would escort this asshole out.
He went from being about a meter away to leaning on the bar, facing her, faster than she should register, and she’d only had one drink. He said, “When I see a grown woman wearing overalls, the first thing I think is that I want to be her friend.”
As she’d learned in health class, a single drink is intoxicating enough so as to cripple detailed tasks. And yet, Hannah still had enough dexterity to give him the evil eye.
Impervious, he snapped his wrist like a stage magician, and a business card was suddenly between his fingers. She plucked it away from him and read it. “This paper is a disgrace.”
He shrugged. “It’s true.”
She read the card and said, “Hannah. You have to earn my last name, Max Fuentes, reporter, feature’s desk.”
He told her, “I don’t have a lot of time.” Nonsense he was in his mid-twenties, tops. He was made of time. “I’m going to get straight to the point.” And this is when he invites her to his apartment so they could talk a little better and have a drink, and whatdoyouknow, his dick is in her mouth. Unexpectedly, he said, “I was hoping you’d accompany me to a party tomorrow night.”
“That’s cutting it a bit close.” Hannah had nothing going on tomorrow. She never had anything going on.
He rolled his eyes. “You have no idea what I had to go through to get an invite.”
“Why don’t you ask your girlfriend?” she asked. He seemed like a guy who would cheat.
“Are you press?”
With a limp wrist, Max clutched his heart. “Well, I never!”
“Just go in,” the guard groaned.
Before they could set foot on the stoop, Max said, “I should have warned you about this before I invited you.”
“Is this a swinger party?”
He squinted his already squinty eyes at her and processed this like an AI text generator might process any verse from any Beck song. “No!” he replied with equal parts, confusion and frustration.
“Look,” he said, “if I wanted to be mean, I’d just lock you inside there without any coaching, but I am not a mean man. I’m a lover, not a spiter.” He held onto her shoulders, and she was witnessing the kind of sincerity she’d ever expected, based on the hours she knew him. “What you’re about to see,” he told her, “may—”
The front door burst open, disgorging a handsome man so casual Max looked formal. For comparison, Max was wearing a tie, but his shirt was not tucked in. The laid-back man in the hoodie tackled him in a hug. “Max Fuentes, you animal! What are you going to do tonight? No, don’t tell me. I want to be surprised.” The man turned around and grinned at Hannah.
She’d known this man since she was a teenager. She saw him in a movie, the ostentatious Romeo + Juliet. This man played a prince. On the stoop of this rich person’s home, that same prince was exactly the same age as he was twenty-five years ago.
Here she was, in the perfect place to dazzle a comedic actor and improv performer with her stunning wit, which she liked to think she had, and all she could say in that moment was, “How old are you?”
Paul Rudd frowned for a moment, and his face relaxed into pure amusement. She could sit on a step and stare at that smile until tomorrow, and it will be the best party she’d ever been to. “I’m a Highlander,” he told her. “Come on inside, Taylor’s trying to make Fassbender smile, and it’s not working.”
Once she stepped over the threshold, she made out generations of TV and movie actors, some of the few directors she recognized, and some musicians. “Holy fucking shit!”
Max grabbed her hand and whispered in her ear, “Hold it together. You get used to it after a while.”
“How?”
“Drugs,” he replied.
She did a roll call in her head, noting, “Is that Sydney Sweeney?”
Max obscured his face with one hand and clutched Hannah’s arm with the other. “We need to get out of here, now!”
She craned her neck to see what was behind her. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s really clingy,” he breathed.
Still craning, Hannah admired the way her tube-top accommodated her assets. She wasn’t going to defy gravity forever, that bitch, but she should enjoy them for now.
Hannah returned her attention back to Max and said, “I never thought you’d pass on the opportunity to spend quality time with a D-cup.”
“Like I said,” he replied, “really clingy.”
A sound like a balloon being emptied very slowly pierced the air.
Max froze and looked around for an escape route. “Fuck! She knows I’m here!”
Again, he was tackled in a hug, but this time from a wispy blond. She threw an arm around him and dragged him around the corner
Hannah called out, “Don’t leave me alone!” He left her alone.
She was at a Hollywood party in New York City, and she had nothing to say to any of these people except for talking about their movies. For most of them, she couldn’t even do that. Hell, she’d never seen anything Sydney Sweeney was in, she just recognized her from all the press. There had to be a wall to lean on until she could fetch Max and get out of here. She didn’t even like movies that much, and she was in awe everywhere she looked.
Confidently, she could state that she was a huge fan of the actor shuffling in her direction.
She was no Cate Blanchett, but she had the chops to be her someday. And she was pointing at Hannah.
She looked behind her, and no one was looking in Rebecca Ferguson’s direction. She turned back to witness those cheekbones approach.
Rebecca Ferguson jabbed the air in Hannah’s direction. She pointed at herself.
Rebecca Ferguson smiled that dirty smile of hers and closed the distance. She leaned in close to Hannah’s ear and shouted, “There’s a keg of margarita!” She backed away and nodded. “I’m not taking the piss, love, there is a bloody keg of margarita.” She put a large Mason jar to her lips and gulped from it. Tipping it over, she whined, “Bugger, I’m out. Luckily …” She waved her arms and charged away, shouting, “… there’s a bloody keg!”
A rail-thin woman wearing aviators and a ruffled, dark pompadour stepped into Hannah’s line of sight. She said, “You look like your date ran off with Sydney Sweeney.”
Startled, Hannah asked, “How did you know?”
“Dates are always running off with Sweeney,” the woman replied. She shrugged. “Can’t say as I blame ‘em. I’d run off with her if she asked.”
Hannah realized there was something worse than being in a party, recognizing everyone but not knowing a single person. It was not recognizing someone. Oh, well, she might as well get it over with. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are.”
The woman waved her hand dismissively. “I’d be shocked if you did. My name’s Tig.”
“Who names their child Tig?” Hannah asked before she could stop herself.
Tig bumped her shoulder affectionately. “People who don’t like kids. Can I show you the bar?”
That’s how she found herself in the kitchen, sipping keg margarita out of a jar, waving at Rebecca Ferguson every time she came in for a refill.
***
Finally, she was in her bedroom, and the first thing she did when she staggered inside was not to turn on the lights. There had been light everywhere during her whole blurry journey to get here that she could do this in the dark.
Hiking up her skirt, she decided to get the hard part over with and set to work peeling her hose off. She liked this pair a lot. They were charcoal gray and had the sexiest sheen to them. She had legs. She had nice legs. In fact, if she could figure out how, she’d wrap her legs around her neck.
Hannah had enough presence of mind to roll them off her but did not have the presence of mind to check if she was close enough to the bed. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to undress in the dark, drunk, but it’s the first time she’d missed the mattress. She was getting too old for this shit.
She resumed on the floor, and everything went smoothly after that, until she reached her toes. None of the ten were giving up their grip on her nylons. What nightmare was this? She started to cry. When her legs went limp, so did the hose. She tossed them, along with her underwear, into the laundry, along with the jeans, T-shirts, and men’s boxers. Her turtleneck followed.
Her skirt took a little longer because she had to stand up and unzip it. But even that couldn’t deter her from her goal, her El Dorado. As she snuggled in, she sighed. Being drunk makes the thread count go up. Warmth crept over her, like a microwave burrito, and the microwave dinged, singing her off to a sloppy sleep.
***
She felt like she had just calculated pi to the six-hundredth digit in her head, and if she didn’t know better, she was in a waterbed. That would be ludicrous. She didn’t own a waterbed. She sat up, shaking up her brain like a jar of pudding. The good news was that this was not a real waterbed. The bad news was, it wasn’t hers. It probably belonged to the other naked—she lifted the covers to check for sure—person in the bed.
Did he roofie her, lure her here, undress her, have his way with her, then fall asleep?
Typical. But those blurs in her memory focused, and she was exactly as drunk as she should be with six margaritas. Out of a bloody keg. Was she margarita-buddies with Rebecca Ferguson?
She was losing the thread. She steered her thoughts like a cruise ship going back for a man overboard and found her way back to this moment. The fact that it wasn’t her bed explained a lot, actually, like this luxurious thread count.
This guy finds her naked in this really nice and spacious room, and he has her way with her. On the other hand, this could be an innocent mistake. Regardless, she needed to get off this mattress. She rolled to her feet while wrapping herself in the sheet, which would have looked really cool, had her dexterity not died last night. Now her head was covered, and she couldn’t get free.
She clawed the sheet from her face and realized she’d displaced her bedfellow. Fuck. She was hoping to get out without him noticing. She had exactly as long as he needed to untangle himself from the comforter and hopefully cover up. She didn’t even have time to move. He sat up, bracing his back against the bed, not exposing himself in the slightest. He looked up at her and said, “Whoa.”
She froze. A scream clawed its way up her throat, and she held it back through sheer force of will.
He sighed. “Yes, it’s me. I’m usually cool with fans fanning out on me, but I’m going to make an exception for you. Because you’re naked. In my bed. And I don’t know who you are.” “This has all been a big misunderstanding,” she told him. Rather than take a swing at her
like anyone else would have with that slow pitch, he allowed her to continue. “I thought this was my room.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“I didn’t even know you were at this party,” she said. “This is my house.”
She sighed. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“Look,” he told her, “I’m really angry right now. If anyone sees you coming out of this room, this could destroy my life. I’m engaged, and I can’t lose her. Yesterday was the anniversary of my friend’s death, and a few of us were supposed spend a quiet evening together, telling stories. Suddenly, it became a party. What am I supposed to say here? Oh, we just woke up naked in the same bed, but nothing happened? I wouldn’t believe that.”
“That’s a problem for later,” Hannah said. “The only thing I care about now is hearing a story about River Phoenix.”
He looked away bashfully and grinned. Jesus, he was handsome. She grew up with him, enjoying his expanding catalog of works and publicity photos, and she didn’t imagine that he would be even better looking in his fifties.
He brushed his hair out of his face. “All right, so he and I were in New York, on a press tour, and we spent the past two hours doing shots at CBGB’s. The bar closes, and we’re still pretty keyed up, so we decide to walk back to our hotel in Midtown. We’re in the East Village in the nineties.” He chuckled. “We were immortal.”
He sighed, took a moment between breaths, and perked up. “So we’re walking, and River does something, I’m not sure what. He does it again, and I’m thinking, ‘There is no way he just leapfrogged over a parking meter.’ But he did. I didn’t know he could do that. I ask him how, and he says, ‘It’s easy. You try.’ And I did.” He laughed. “I slept with an ice pack between my legs.”
She laughed too. “You idiot!”
He inhaled and exhaled. “Thank you,” he said. “I needed that. But here’s the thing: even though I didn’t control that party, I know every face there. I don’t know your face. Or your name, or how you got into my room.”
“I’m Hannah,” she replied. “I’m the plus-one of this guy I just met.” The gear that would remind her of his name was rusted. It tried to turn, but it encountered resistance until she forced it through, making her headache twice as excruciating. “Max. Max Fuentes. He works at—”
“I know Max,” he grunted. “Was he with you when you crawled into bed?”
“Ew, no!” she replied. “He’s in his mid-twenties, tops. There’s a difference between confidence and cockiness, and he’s a whole lot of the wrong one. I’m not dating, but if I was, I am letting him nowhere near this body.”
He chuckled. “But you’ll let me?”
She rolled her eyes innocently. “You’re, you know, you.”
He grinned a shy grin. “I guess if I have to wake up naked with someone, I’m lucky it was you.”
“You must get a lot of psycho fans.”
“A lot of these people think they know me,” he said. “I learned there’s a word for that: ‘parasocial relationships.’”
“I was thinking about how we grew up together,” she said. “And you never even knew I was alive.”
“I know you’re alive now,” he told her, “and I’m never going to forget you.”
“I don’t have to tell you that I’ll be reliving this in my head for the rest of my life.”
He breathed. “I have to find out what the damage is,” he said. “Turn around.”
She obeyed.
“Do you swear on your love of my movies that you won’t tell Max about this?” he asked.
“He did bring me to one of the most exciting parties of my life,” she replied, “but I could go the rest of my life without those beady little eyes staring at my chest.”
“I’m done,” he announced. “Your turn.”
It took her considerably longer. Her hose was going in her purse, but first, she needed to extricate her underwear from them.
“Did Max see you go up to my room?” he asked.
“We got separated right away, so I don’t know what happened to him,” she said.
“Sydney Sweeney?”
“Who else?” It took three tries to clasp her bra, and she had even reversed it so she could look at the hook. Some of it was because of the hangover, but some of it was because her hands were shaking. More than anything else in the world, she wanted Keanu Reeves to sneak a peek at her.
He didn’t. Facing the wall, he said, “All we can do right now is be optimistic and hope he didn’t.”
***
With his pinkie out, Max sipped on an espresso. “Dude!” he yelled when Keanu entered the breakfast nook. Hannah swept in behind him and sat across from Keanu’s boogieman. There had to be a story there. She wondered if Max would tell her. Even better, she wondered if Keanu would tell her.
“Max,” Keanu said through his teeth, speaking in a staccato that was calm, but infuriated. “Did you help yourself to my six-thousand-dollar espresso machine?”
Max took a sip. “This tastes more like a four-thousand-dollar espresso.”
“Max, you’re using my Dutch porcelain.”
He set the tiny cup and saucer carefully on the table and backed his hands away from them, so as not to alarm their owner. “Sorry, I didn’t know,” Max said. “I’m not that much of an asshole.”
Keanu pounced, retrieved the China, and retreated to the kitchen.
Max leaned over the table and waggled his eyebrows. “I know how to show a girl a good time.”
“Nothing happened, Max.”
“Why should I believe you?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Max,” she moaned, “maybe because I haven’t done anything to indicate I was a dishonest person.”
He shrugged. “Fuck, you’re right! Also, I know Keanu would never cheat on Alexandra. He probably gave you pajamas and held your hair back while you vomited.”
“He’s a fucking gentleman,” she replied as he stood in the door to his breakfast nook. “That makes one of you.”
To Hannah, Keanu said, “Thank you.” To the other one, he said, “Max Fuentes, what the fuck are you doing here?”
“I was hanging out the—”
Keanu raised his hand between them. “Hannah,” he said, “a greasy breakfast is the best hangover cure. Can I buy you brunch?”
“What could possibly be going on in my life that I’d say no to that?” she asked.
“Maybe someone kills your dog, and you have to murder eight hundred people,” her date offered.
“Max,” Keanu sighed.
He stood up and relocated a joint from behind his ear to his lips. “I know when I’m not wanted.”
“No,” Keanu replied, “you’re coming with us.”
***
Kristy’s was the last place Hannah had expected Keanu to pick. She loved Kristy’s, but she grew up working class, so that was eating out. She’d been to enough boutique brunch places to appreciate their aesthetic; but for comfort and nostalgia, you couldn’t beat Kristy’s.
Every one of them looked exactly the same, from the sharp angles and lava rocks to the booths with cushions in one of several nauseating colors. All the food was made of lard, and the coffee pots cooked extra-long. The service was warm, but barely competent. It was cheap, and it was ubiquitous. She hung out in them for high school, and again in college in a different state, and then in New York as an adult.
Keanu took point as we arrived at the diner around the corner, and he was greeted immediately at the door by an older woman in a hunter orange beehive. Keanu kissed her on the cheek and said, “How’s it going, Glennis?”
“Same ol’, same ol’,” she replied. “I see you brought a new customer for us.”
She nodded her head. “I’m Hannah.”
“Pleased to meet you, Hannah.” She floated three inches off the floor. “Max …”
He kissed the back of her hand and bowed. “My beloved,” he replied, “we have a table for three, preferably a booth.”
“Sit anywhere,” she said.
Keanu picked a booth at just the right angle where you couldn’t see it from the door or the floor-to-ceiling windows. Hannah slid in, and Keanu slid in beside her, and she could officially die now.
Max made himself at home on the other side, smirking. “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here.”
“Max Fuentes,” Keanu growled, and she had to say, Keanu Reeves has one of the best growls out there. “What the hell were you doing in my kitchen, drinking my espresso?”
“I wasn’t going home without my date, and my date was crashing in the master bedroom.”
Hannah groaned.
A waitress made her way over. She looked young, but her eyes were old, with the bags and the crow’s feet. She said, “Hi, Keanu.” She bit her lip. “Hi, Max.” She turned to Hannah. “I’ve never met you before. I’m Donna. What can I get you today?”
When the order was tallied up, and Donna departed, Keanu said, “Nothing happened, Max. I’m serious. You could destroy my whole life.”
“First off,” Max said, “you’re a goddamned celebrity and one of the last actual movie stars left. Your life isn’t in danger. Hannah’s life is in danger. You’ll be fine. Second, I would never do that. I actually like Alex. I’m not crazy about you, but she is, so this stays between us. And I know you would never do anything like that to her. Story of a lifetime, and I have to have fucking ethics.”
“That can’t be right,” Hannah said. “I barely know you, and I can tell you have no ethics.”
Donna set down three coffee cups. “I assume you’ll be wanting some of this?” she asked. The coffee she poured into their mugs was black as molasses. “Your food will be here in a couple of minutes.”
Keanu sighed. “Max has ethics. They’re perverted, for sure, but I believe he won’t tell anyone about this.”
“Also,” Max added, “I’m the one who brought Hannah into this. She is an innocent bystander. Even if you had been fooling around, I wouldn’t tell anyone because she did not sign up for this.”
“I still think you’re a douchebag,” Hannah replied.
“Tough,” he said, “but fair.”
Keanu affixed a stare that finally made this overconfident trickster flinch. “What were you doing at my house?”
“I told you,” he said, “I was there for a party.”
“You were not invited.”
“I crashed?” Max shrugged.
“Who invited you?” Keanu demanded. “Was it Alex?”
“Which Alex?” Max asked.
Keanu’s shoulders relaxed, and he chuckled. “Yeah, I guess that’s a good question. Either?”
“No.”
“Then who was it?” Hannah squealed. “The mystery is killing me!”
“You know who it was, Keanu Reeves,” Max told him.
Calmly fuming, he reached a hand inside his jacket and withdrew it, holding a phone. He swiped and tapped and put it to his ear. After a few moments, he said, “Fine, listen.” He waited for the phone to speak. “I’m just going to cut right to the point. You—” The phone interrupted him. “Why did you invite Max Fuentes, paparazzi, to a party at my house?” The phone asked a question. “At Kristy’s. Our Kristy’s.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and frowned at it. “She’s on her way.”
***
It was with little steps that she entered Kristy’s, politely waving off Glennis’s approach. The latter helped out anyway. “They’re in their usual spot.”
She was wearing large granny sunglasses and a wispy scarf around her head, concealing most of her black hair. From the neck up, she was a debutante. Down, she wore a denim jacket and jeans.
Seeing her approach, Max sprang to his feet and spread his arms wide. She squealed and charged him, and they held a long hug.
“Ugh,” grunted Keanu.
Max gestured to the booth’s bench as if he were a maître ‘d, and she bounced her way over to the wall. He took a seat beside her and said, “Let the good times roll.”
Keanu took the hint. “Why would you do that to me? You invited Max Fuentes into my home. You know how much I hate that guy.”
Wynona Ryder slung her arm around Max’s shoulders and used her free hand to pinch his cheek. “It’s okay, Maxy-Waxy, he didn’t mean it.”
Max disentangled himself from her and said, “No, he really hates me. He’s got it rough? I have to live with myself.”
“You’re not that bad,” Wynona said.
“He’s that bad,” Hannah assured her.
“Hi!” Wynona said with that intelligent smile of hers, extending her hand politely. “I’m Wynona!”
“Hannah,” she replied, shaking. “I know who you are.”
“It’s better when you actually introduce yourself,” Wynona explained. “Ask Max, it’s a real panty-dropper.”
Keanu, that legendary cool starting to crack under the intense pressure, pounded on the table. “Why?” he demanded. “Did. You. Do. That. To me?”
“You changed your Netflix password, Keanu,” she snapped. “I just started season three of The Witcher!”
“You know there is a limited number of people we can give our password out to,” Keanu told her. “I wanted to give mine to Alex.”
Wynona poked the table with a surprising amount of force for such a tiny person. “Who’s always been there for you, Keanu?” she demanded. “You never would have survived six months of Coppola without me! I don’t hold that over your head. But you can’t tell me that’s not worth being able to binge Harlan Coben shows!”
“Have you seen Stranger Things?” Hannah asked and tried to ooze down under the table. Helpfully, she added, “Why don’t you just get your own account?”
Wynonna held up her hands, as if she were trying to stop an angry bull from charging. “Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa! Have you lost your mind?”
***
While they waited for their downtown train, Hannah noted, “I should have asked for a toothbrush. I’ll bet Keanu Reeves as all sorts of toothbrushes. He’s probably got a hidden cabinet full of them.”
He turned his head and really looked at her. By the time she turned her head to look at him, he was staring down the tunnel. He turned his gaze to the uptown platform. “I know a lot of people,” he told her, “as you can clearly see. But none of them are my friends. I don’t have any.”
“Are you asking me to be your friend?” she snickered. “You should write a note, ‘Do you like me? YES/NO.’”
“I’m trying to be sincere here!” he shouted. “For once in my fucking life, let me be a real person.”
She breathed. “I’m sorry. You don’t seem like a sincere person.”
“I’m not,” he said. “Everything about me is fake. I need a real person in my life that I can be the real Max around. Hannah, I like the cut of your jib. Come with me.”
“Are all your weekends this exciting?” she asked.
He smirked at her. “Sometimes they’re actually crazy.”