The heel of my peep-toe pump scuffs the scarlet-colored carpet as I depart the comfort of the limo. To call the scene in front of me a “human sea” would be an understatement. Waves of chiffon and satin clash into each other barricaded only by a purple velvet rope. Sharp men in jet black suits settle their hands into the small of their partner’s backs, guiding them down the red carpet until they stand in front of a stark white backdrop with the golden Oscars trophy etched into it. On the other side of the velvet rope a lurching crowd of paparazzi clamor to capture their perfect shot of stars in the flesh. I turn my gaze towards the camera flashes that trap me between the doorway and that motorized cloak of anonymity I was yearning to escape. Between each flash, I catch a glimpse of a vulture shrouded behind their camera throwing my name out as bait for my attention. Their countenance is always ravenous, crinkled, and dripping with salty sweat. 

“Vivianne! Vivianne Hardaway!”

“How does it feel to be nominated for best actress three years in a row?”

“Vivianne!”

“Your dress! Who are you wearing?”

“Vivianne!”

“Do you think you’ll finally take it home this year?”

I whip my head from one camera to the next seeking out their bait. Each turn sends the shingles of flapper dress twirling, I make sure to keep my shoulders back, nose and cheekbones reaching proudly for the light, and hands hanging cupped at the base of my stomach as if to catch droplets of afternoon rain. As vile as those vultures are, the craving is mutual. My flesh goes rigid as I catch Lori Bowerman’s plump breasts and round behind out of the corner of my eye. I never liked her because she only books roles for the way she oozes sex appeal and directors just lap it up, and she’s never liked me because I poured sour milk in her dark roast coffee on the set of When in Como. She had it coming. Instead of looking down and shielding my countenance, I look up. The pointed stakes topping the golden domes of Shrine Auditorium stretch towards the evening sky. My eyes jump from dome to dome, hoping they are deliberating with the heavens on my behalf.

I guess they were not, because I have no Oscar to polish above my mantle-piece and no pining husband to tell me that he’s proud of me and that no shiny relic could change that. Critics said I was too old, that I didn’t win that best-supporting actor award for Windslow because there were “new long-legged chicks in town with better chops and cuter dimples.” I thought I had perfected my Meisner Technique and the breathing during my monologue, that this performance would win it for me. But that was 31 years ago today when my heel last scuffed that carpet and I heard my name barked in hunger. Now, I could only beg the heavens that Johnny’s convenience store down the block restocked their Crunchy Salted Almond Toblerones.

Shaking that memory from my mind, I tug the corners of my violet house robe tighter across my chest. I glance down at my watch to make sure I am on time. 8:34 AM on the dot. It is a bright Sunday morning after a night of unexpected storms, and I am waiting for the paperman to turn onto my street, Merriweather Avenue, for his morning route. I brush a dot of dirt off the bubblegum pink petunias planted in the pots that flank my front door and pick the dry leaves from between the stems one by one. 

My eyes busy themselves too. Across the street, Miss Mey rocks back and forth in her white rocking chair angled perfectly to be able to yell at the kids down the street who let their basketball roll into her yard. She is plump, dressed in a pale blue cardigan and a white nightgown that just passes her knees. Her wiry gray hair curls around the arms of her glasses and the soft curve of her chin. Her daughter, Yolanda, has just moved back home a couple of weeks or so ago, but I had barely seen her since. Yolanda has three kids of her own that stumbled into the house with her that day she moved in, and none of them seemed over the age of six. 

I stretch my hand up into the air to wave hello, only receiving a tired dip of her head in return. Her unenthusiastic acknowledgment stings me with sadness not because I expected a big-toothed smile, but because for some odd reason I long for what she has: the doting husband who adds an extra bounce in his step when I succeed and strokes my suffering psyche when I do not—the one to have two humorous and gentle children with and love unconditionally through their mistakes. I remember all of my sorry attempts to achieve it. Dear Charles, overprotective but caring Theodore, and daring Matthew, and those were the good ones, the ones I thought would last. Until they didn’t. Scared off by some elusive thing: maybe my passion, maybe my determination, or maybe they were just drawn more strongly to something or someone that could finally lift herself out of the same frozen place. There was also Christopher and John and Armand and William and Ignacio and Ferdinand and that one casting director and that other co-star and the many, many, many paper boys who have fallen into my bed over the years. I think I liked the happenstance of it all, the way no pen-happy screenwriter could script the whimsicality of meeting a man at the casting call room or the front porch of my house on Sunday morning at 8:34 am. Now that she was no longer on the big screen, these paper boys were really all she had, or wanted, really. They would never stay in the job long, they were always young and spry twenty-somethings who eventually got their big break in this alluring city, leaving a vacancy for the next one to fill. 

I peel my eyes off of Miss Mey’s house and look to my right at Mr. Sawyer’s house. What looks to be more than 10 newspapers are piled up next to his wrought-iron mailbox with the “3” from his “3089” address number dangling on the side. His whole lawn is littered with forgotten things. A stray clog with the pinky toe chewed out by his devil-spawn of a dog. A Hog’s Back beer bottle tossed next to the hose he left unraveled the last time he decided to water his crumbling azaleas. 

Just as I go to kick a slobbery dog toy back to his side of the grass, the paperman rounds the corner. That silver belt buckle of his is doing some good work, settling the top of his pants squarely on his sturdy hips. I’ve had a fun couple of years reigning in young men like him, and he makes me want more than a couple more. I pull a few strands of hair behind my left ear and pinch some life back into my cheeks. Shoulders back, nose and cheekbones up, hands cupped. I catch him just as he goes to toss the paper into my front yard. 

“No need to toss it! I’m right here, I can take that from you, mister.” He flashes a simple, pursed smile and holds the paper out to me as I come down the stairs.

“Here you go, ma’am.” I linger my fingers on his as I take the envelopes from his sturdy hand. I try to search his eyes for any sign of intrigue, but instead, he averts his gaze down toward the cracking sidewalk.

“Oh, it’s just miss,” I say, poking my chest out just enough for my stately collarbones to catch the morning light. That always did use to work.  

“Um, you have a good day now, miss,” he says turning quickly on his heels towards the next house. 

I wanted to scream at his back, LOOK AT ME! Why wouldn’t he just look at me? I am still a woman, you know. I still have full breasts and pink lips and a uterus and a vagina and it shouldn’t matter that the skin that holds it all together is a little more strained than that of the twenty-something leggy blondes that walk the red carpet that I layed out for them. That is my carpet they walk and my camera they blush into. I was more of a woman in front of that camera then than I will ever be now. All I had to do was poke my chest out and curl my lips and every single man on the other side of that screen would make me a woman over and over again in their filthy minds. Would it matter, now, if I stuffed myself full of that poisonous Botox like I know Lori will in 10 years? I have all the parts of being a woman that men can ram themselves into and slice apart with the malice that they cloak as piety. And we believe men when they say those slices are out of love—or lust, either is enough for me to be at peace with the terminal condition of womanhood—because pain is what makes me a woman. I wanted to scream at his back, MAKE ME A WOMAN!

But there is only one thing worse than an aging woman, and that is a crazy woman. Once they call us “crazy” we become a radioactive pile of parts for no good use other than to pile other heinous claims of female hysteria on top of. So, I say no to the pile at this moment, and instead, turn back towards my front door with a dizzying headache. 

 ___

Back inside now, the mantle jutting out from the fireplace almost startles me. When I was still a young actress excited to wake up before dawn to audition for new roles every single day, I appointed that mantle—square across from the front door so that anyone could see it as soon as they walked in—as the throne for all of the awards I dreamed of winning. The first to claim its rightful spot was the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Performance in 1986, and the last was for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 2002. I make sure to keep the latter extra polished so that the gilded mask still shines in the light so that I never lose touch with Joanne. Playing Joanne, the rich housewife who moved to Lake Como from Southport, Connecticut with her three kids and chiseled husband, in When in Como felt left drifting off into a sweet and familiar dream just out of reach. I think of those 16 years of untainted love for the art spanning the mantle piece. 16 years of me, the camera, and the occasional man to keep me company. That was all I needed. It tended to get a bit catty with the other women of Hollywood anyway, and I only cared to keep them close enough to spark gossip about being seen having dinner with potential costars. 

I saunter over to my chestnut armoire and let out a hot breath that I seem to have been holding in since made my morning coffee. I let my fingers graze through the clothing hangers. Each digit seems to detach from my hand working in isolation solely from the memory of their seasoned muscles. With each scrape of a hanger across the supporting wooden bar emerges a capsule of a time passed. 

The last time I wore my crushed beet bell bottoms was at my last audition for the part of Joanne in When in Como. I believed that since I wore them the time I booked my first job as a commercial model for Kohl’s store-brand perfume, then they must have magic sewn into their seams. So I wore them to every audition after. That perfume was cheap and smelled like baby powder and hot musk, but I worshiped those pants nonetheless. That once vibrant beet color looks dull now. They must have run out of magic. 

The last time I wore my sage green cashmere sweater, I was at a cafe on Oakwood Avenue, my favorite street to stroll down to catch the peering eye of a stranger. I thought this sweater made me out to be the Los Angeles somebody who was put together enough to wear cashmere but carefree enough to sling it over her shoulders like a used-up towelette. No one ever stopped me, though, even as my eyes begged from beneath my cat-eye sunglasses. A few turned heads and a stray barely-audible gasp fed my cravings just enough to keep me coming back every Sunday.  

My fingers linger against the flapper-style dress at the end of the rack. Its glimmering shingles glint in the second-hand light, lifting themselves off the otherwise pitch-black fabric like stars in a clear night sky. Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m dropping my pants down to my ankles, pulling its straps off the hanger, and gliding the zipper down its teeth. I shuffle my feet over to my full-length mirror and lock eyes with the apparition gawking back at me. We are two halves that together animate an uncanny whole. I rake through my greying roots to my auburn-dyed ends. The lines across my face are only there to stain my once porcelain features, and the skin around my shoulders drapes like a heavy blanket hung on the back of a wooden chair.      

I reach for my cat-eye sunglasses propped gingerly against my nightstand lamp and settle them atop my nose. Crouching down, I grab my peep-toe heels I have hidden behind my stack of old scripts. My breath snags at the sight of my prized possessions left to collect dust like old tabloids a hoarder can’t seem to throw away. 

Stealing one last glimpse of my apparition in the mirror I think to myself, Johnny’s must have restocked my Toblerones by now. What’s the harm in checking? 

____

I fling open the door to the convenience store with one hand on the handle and the other on the edge of my glasses, pulling them off to reveal my expecting eyes. I check to see if the door chime aroused the cashier’s attention. It did not. His gaze remains locked onto the TV monitor displaying some sporting match. The man must be no younger than 35, judging from the cracks emerging at the sides of his eyes and the lack of sheen in his probably once-golden blonde hair. 

I walk over to where I know they keep the Toblerones and dash my eyes across the shelves needing only to catch sight of the cyan packaging to know I’ve found what I wanted. Clenching one Toblerone into each of my fists I peer around the aisle to find that the game still holds the cashier’s gaze captive. 

I drop the candy bars onto the counter louder than I intended to, but finally meeting his hazel eyes with mine washes any remorse away with haste.

“How ‘ya doin’ ma’am?”

“Oh, I’m doing just fine. I’m out for a casual stroll and wanted to stop by for my favorite candy, but I’m glad I found you here too. What’s your name?”

“Jonathan, ma’am. And what’s yours?” he asks.

I pause, shutting my lips to stop the “v” sound from escaping. My name? This man is asking me my name? Dressed like this? IT’S VIVIANNE. VIVIANNE HARDAWAY. MY NAME IS–

“Joanne. Joanne’s my name.”

“That’s a beautiful name, the same as my grandmother’s. You remind me a bit of her, actually. Did you find everything you needed?” I turn my gaze back down to my two measly candy bars as I try to ignore the burning sensation swelling in my stomach.

“Yes, sir. I guess I did.”

Already having memorized the math, I hand the man $5.98 before he tells me my total. I slide my sunglasses back onto my nose and collect my three prizes: two Toblerones and an apparition named Joanne. 

“You have a nice day ma’am,” he says as the game takes hostage of his attention once again.