I really am a lot like Leah, the “barren” woman, which I think means she was deaf. I mean, I’m not deaf, but I do sort of drift off a lot, and I am “tender-eyed” too, like the Bible calls Leah. I have a good heart, and I’m way, way too nice. And I’ve been overlooked all my life.
He’s coming.
[The remainder of the paragraph is illegible. Forensic textile experts hired by the Sun believe the page was scraped with a nail file or the blade of a sewing scissor.]
Now it’s 7:30 and Jayson was supposed to be here at 7 to pick me up. Another hospital party, for kids with bone cancer, or inside-out organs or bugs in their blood — something gross, it’s always something gross.
I will not hug the really messed-up ones. I told Jayson — no hugging and wipes, bring sterile wipes. He never listens.
This afternoon he was in here, going over my dresses for tonight, and I turned away to look out the window because A) I didn’t want to look at him because I hate him, and B) because there was this beautiful red bird on the window ledge. Bright red, and big, big as a cat.
Jayson said it was a Pope bird or a Thorny Cross bird, or another churchy name, like he knows anything, and after it flew away (actually, it really just sort of fell off the ledge, I hope it’s okay!!!), I caught Jayson fucking around with my phone, my private phone with all my addresses and numbers.
I said, “What are you doing?” and he clicked it shut like it was nothing to invade my privacy. He said he thought it was his phone, no bigs. But his phone is blue, and mine is tangerine. Jayson wonders why I don’t trust him.
I’ve decided I don’t care that I don’t know what he looks like.
Well, okay, I care a little, and I have an imagination, because I’m an actor — but if he’s really ugly or old I really don’t care.
I’ve met every good-looking man in the world in the last year and the big secret is all good-looking men are exactly the same. They’re like men’s dress-up shoes: They come in black or they come in brown, they have pointy ends or they have square ends, and that’s that for choices.
I’m so bored with “beauty.” I can look at any big actor now and I can tell you in ten seconds which trainer he uses, which diet he’s on, where he gets his facials, who fills his pecs with saline, or his dick. It’s like math, like algebra — squats plus tensor bar plus Nevada mud bath plus coffee enema three times a week equals one shower scene in your next movie. Do the same math five times and eat raw lamb for twelve days and you get a sex scene too.
I mean, if I can figure this out after two movies and one season on 7th Heaven, when I was like nine, why can’t the public figure it out? It’s amazing that people don’t just start shooting celebrities, just for fun, just to see how quickly the producers can grow a new one, like starfish legs.
I don’t think I’m unreplaceable. I don’t think I’m special, or like a part of history. No fucking way am I doing “art.”
Maybe college would be fun. I’d like to get drunk and throw up all over myself on a cute guy’s front lawn, like my friends back home do every weekend. Nobody worries that they’re “out of control.” It’s totally expected, totally acceptable behavior. I mean, Jayson even took the mini-bar key. “It looks better,” he said.
Better to who? The maid? Jayson is so controlling. And I pay him for it. That’s fucked.
He told me his name today.
Okay, it can’t be his real name, probably, but it’s still a name.
Azrael.
He said it was Jewish for, “He who makes the lasting peace.”
It’s beautiful, even if it is fake. Fake and beautiful are the same thing anyway.
Twenty-nine hours till he arrives. I’m excited, more than I should be. I should be excited about, like, one hundred other things in my life, but he’s the only mystery I have left. Once you’ve spent seventeen hours hanging from a green wire pretending to be scared of the end of a mop that’s supposed to be a giant lizard alien head, most of the surprises are gone out of life.
I mean, I could get pregnant, that would be new. That would be news too. Brianna and Azrael. What would the tabloids call us? Braz? Anra? Briel? Brianna and Azrael. Brianna and Azrael.
Please, God. Please, God, let him be cute. At least cute.
No, forget it. Sorry, God, scratch that. I am such a C-U-Next-Tuesday. I don’t care. Azrael can have three heads and a harelip on all three mouths. He’s a listener. My listener.
“He who makes the lasting peace.”
Ten minutes would be enough for me.
Fuck, Jayson’s here, at ten to 8:00. Nice and late. Off we go to pet the zombie kids. I wish I had some gloves — those long kind, up to the elbows. I could pretend it’s part of my outfit.
September 7
Needy — people are so needy.
If I had terminal cancer I would just want to be left alone.
I wouldn’t want balloons, or slides I couldn’t slide on, or an ice cream cake I couldn’t eat anyway — and especially no fucking thank you would I want fucking Mr. ET Canada Ben Mulroney signing my IV bag!!!
I mean, Jesus Christ!!! Why didn’t he just sign the kids’ foreheads so they can all be buried with his autograph? That guy is like an animatronic dinosaur at the Tar Pits — he moves his head, he opens his mouth, he moves his head in the other direction.
Best moment: Mulroney corners me while this girl who can’t stop moving her head is getting her face painted like Spider-Man (because he figures nobody can hear him over the girl going umma umma umma) and he asks me, all “real” and sweet and concerned, if I want to talk about Pulsar Girl and why I’m fighting with the director.
Please, why would I fight with a director after the movie is done? What’s the point?
I smell Jayson’s stale CK One all over this. Maybe that’s the new sell talk for the movie — Brianna’s tantrum. Somebody has to be blamed, and it’s never the director because here’s another big secret: Directors are pure profit. You can work a director till he’s like ninety-five, as long as he can point at the actors and mumble.
The sad part is, the kids were really excited to see me. I don’t get it. Maybe one of them, maybe two, has ever even seen me in anything. But Somebody Special was there, and that’s all that mattered.
I kind of think that if I only had a few weeks to live, I would consider myself the most Special person on earth, as a survival strategy. I would let all my animal instincts take over, become totally selfish and full of self-love, even self-worship. I would save every breath for me.
September 8
Azrael sent me the most beautiful plant. I wonder if I can take it back on the plane?
It’s an orchid, I think. There’s no real roots, just a ball of hard wood underneath this cloud of green spongy stuff that looks like a pot scrubber. The flower is navy-blue, or purple, I can’t tell. It’s huge, the size of two grapefruits, and it smells like dish soap, but salty. That part I’m not liking so much.
His note says the flower represents “purity risen from offal” and that the flower has “cleansing powers.” That explains the smell.
I asked Jayson what “offal” meant, but he just went all faggy on me and waved his hands around like I just farted. He says the flower looks like something you put on a coffin. He would know.