Chapter 39: Public Enemy Number One

The apartment went dark when Ronan turned the television off.

He’d just watched Jane’s interview with Timmy, and he felt great. There was no other word for it. His name had gone out on national television and he was giddy about it.

The show had made him out to be a nobody, of course. Timmy had held the cast list up and said the second name on it meant nothing to anyone. That was fine. What mattered was Jane, who had been respectful about him the whole way through, and appreciative too.

His phone had been going all night and he hadn’t touched it once. That was on purpose. The east had watched the thing hours before it aired out here, and one look at that screen would have told him what Jane said before he got to hear her say it.

Now he picked it up.

Mr. Park had written. So had the guys from the restaurant, all of them congratulating him. They were across town on the same delay he was and had only just seen it themselves.

Dallas had watched it hours ahead of him. His family’s messages had been sitting there the whole time he was waiting, and his little sister hadn’t stopped.

"So when exactly were you planning to tell me about the kissing. And the intimate scenes. With Jane Kingsley. You lucky dog."

It got a smile out of him, and he let himself be proud of it.

"Would you have believed me? You wouldn’t have. And I’d rather you found out sitting there with everybody else, watching me actually do it with her."

"Ha. No. Probably not." Then, a second later: "Want to know what the three of us decided? That you weren’t her co-star at all. That you were an extra on that set who got in front of her one day and talked her into a couple of photos."

"See?"

"Look at you. Enjoy it now, because I’m not going easy on you. If you’re bad in this I’ll say so online and I won’t shut up about it, and I’m putting one star on your show on IMDb."

He smiled at that one too. "Just watch it."

"Oh, and Pawpaw’s going out to buy a ninety-inch television. Ninety. That’s what he’s spending it on, your pilot. So don’t be bad in it, because he’ll talk about it forever and none of us will get him to stop."

That his grandfather had taken it that far got a laugh out of him. "Nobody’s getting disappointed. You can tell him that."

"Mom and Dad want you on Skype tomorrow. They’ve got about a hundred questions saved up and every one of them is about the intimate scenes."

He shook his head at the screen. "Tell them no. Sit and go through those scenes with my parents? Do they hear themselves? And the more I think about it, the whole lot of them, Mom and Dad and Mimi and Pawpaw, sitting down together to watch me do that with her, that isn’t normal either."

"Deal with it. You’re the lucky one here, remember. And I’m not missing this. When those scenes come on I’m watching their faces, not the screen."

He was still deciding whether that one deserved an answer when the next came in.

"Okay, I’m going. It’s two in the morning here and I have school. Skype tomorrow, don’t forget. Night, movie star."

He left it there and went back up the list. His agent had written hours ago, back when the interview first went out east, and the message had been sitting there ever since.

"Call me when you get a minute."

Now he had one. He called, and it connected right away.

"Riley. You wanted me to call. What’s going on?"

"Yeah, man. Listen, I want you hearing this from me and not off the internet in the morning." Riley had the phone in close. "That interview’s been out for hours now and it’s already done a lot to you. One interview. More than you’d think. There’s pros in it and there’s cons."

Ronan sat up. "Pros and cons?"

"Pros first. Jane praised you on national television and there wasn’t one word out of her about you that wasn’t good. Not one. That puts you on the map. I’ve already got emails in, productions asking me about you." He kept going. "And you know how this industry works, man. There’s nothing on you anywhere. Your information isn’t online, you’re not even listed on IMDb for «Castaway» yet. Doesn’t stop them. They ask around until they find out who you are and who’s representing you, and then they come to me."

Ronan nodded at the dark wall. "Yeah. So that’s the pros?"

"Not just that. CAA’s noticed you now. Up until tonight you were mine and nobody else’s in that building. I couldn’t get one person in there to ask me a single question about you. Since she said your name my phone hasn’t stopped, and half of it is people inside my own agency wanting to know about the kid Jane Kingsley won’t stop talking about." A short laugh. "Wait till I walk in there in the morning. That’s the agency deciding you’re worth something, Ronan. It means you’re not just my client anymore, you’re theirs."

"They’ll put your name up for work I could never have got you near on my own, and the publicity people will take my calls now. And NBS runs ads for its own shows, thirty seconds, clips out of the episode with a voice telling you when it’s on. The one for Sunday is all Jane, every clip of it."

He let that sit a second.

"After tonight they’ll cut it again with your scenes in it and your name at the end next to hers, and play it every hour until the show airs. The whole country sees you and it costs you nothing, because Jane sold you on their own air and they’d be fools to waste it."

Then he stopped. "And then there’s the cons..."

"The cons." Ronan heard himself say it and felt something cold go through his stomach.

"Jane isn’t hiding it." Riley took his time with it. "That she liked working with you. The kissing, the intimate scenes, all of it. She sat there and used the word ’enjoy’ on national television, and that lands on you, man. Not on her."

Ronan frowned at the wall. "Isn’t that a good thing?"

"Usually. Not tonight." A breath went out of him. "Look. A big piece of her audience is men who are in love with her, and I don’t mean casually. She’s the pearl of Hollywood to them. No scandals, nothing on her, all of it clean. And every interview she’s ever sat through, she’s complained about that part of the job. She hates the kissing, she hates the intimate scenes, she’s said so for years and those guys loved hearing it. Tonight she said the opposite, about you, and some of them have lost their minds over it."

He could see where his agent was going now.

"Get on the internet when we’re done here. Twitter especially. People want to know who you are already, and a lot of them don’t want it for a good reason."

"Thanks. I’ll go look."

He hung up and opened the laptop.

#Castaway was already sitting in the top ten trending, and Jane Kingsley’s name was at eight. There were Yahoo! articles up about the interview too, and those were being passed around as fast as the hashtag.

That was big even for her. It didn’t take him long to find the reason.

She’d said the opposite of everything she’d ever said before, and people had noticed. Half of it wasn’t even about the words. There were whole threads about her eyes while she talked about Ronan, an actor nobody had heard of.

He scrolled into the replies.

"This is horrible!!! My goddess Jane got kissed by her co-star and did intimate scenes with a NOBODY and she ENJOYED it??? She always hates those! This is a nightmare"

"Whoever this bastard is that kissed my lovely Jane and did those scenes with her deserves to die"

"Did anyone check IMDb for who the actor is? the name is Ronan. I looked. Nothing on him yet"

"If anybody knows who this actor is please tell me"

"Your name is Ronan. Ronan. One address is all I need and then youll find out what I—"

He didn’t finish that one. His phone buzzed on the desk beside him, and it was a text from Jane.

"Hey. Did you watch the interview?"

He put the rest of it out of his head and typed back. "Yeah. It was great. Thank you for putting me in that good a light."

"Ha. You earned it. You’re good to work with."

That got a smile out of him, and some of the weight off his chest with it.

"It’s made me the enemy of every man in the country, though. I’ve just been reading what they think of me."

Hers came back fast. "Oh no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way."

"It’s not your fault. Don’t worry about it." He sat looking at the screen, and then sent the rest of it. "I might have to move soon, though. This place isn’t going to keep anybody out. The pilot airs and then they’ll all know it’s me."

"Which is exactly what I’ve been telling you. Go and look at those addresses I sent you. I know the owners."

"I will."

He didn’t want to. He’d paid this month’s rent a couple of days ago and now he was walking away from it, and that was money gone for nothing. But the pilot was airing soon, and after that, staying here wasn’t a good idea at all.