Tess believed her. That is, she believed that Lottie thought she knew everything. There was a difference.

Chapter 19

No one said outright that it was Johnny Tampa’s fault that they had to have second meal that night, but he knew they were blaming him. The crew seemed to have fallen into the habit of believing everything that went wrong was Johnny’s fault, which was so unfair. He was in almost every scene of this goddamn thing, and he was always meticulously prepared – had his lines cold and was even making a good run at a Baltimore accent before Flip and Ben decreed that he shouldn’t. But he needed to understand the mechanics of this time-travel gig, why his character seemed to move between present and past in ways he couldn’t control or predict. Until that was made clear, he was going to have trouble in certain scenes.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ben had said tonight, clearly exasperated that Johnny wouldn’t let the subject drop. “Mann doesn’t know how it works, so why should you know?”

“Mann also doesn’t know that he’s going to end up living in the present, with Betsy as his wife, and I do, so it’s clearly okay for me to be privy to information that Mann doesn’t have,” Johnny countered. “This is about the implicit integrity of the show, whether viewers will feel cheated. If the time travel doesn’t have a logical explanation, even if it’s never spelled out for the viewer, then the character, the world, won’t feel real. People will reject it instinctively, sensing you’re not playing fair.”

Ben had sighed, and gone to summon Flip, the great soother and smoother. But Johnny wasn’t looking for an ego stroke, or even assurance that it was his part that really mattered, that the show was called Mann of Steel, and it wasn’t likely to change. Likely – wait, had Flip said likely the last time they spoke? Likely meant it could change. Was the network going to build up Selene’s part even more? There had been a lot of changes in the last script; they had gone all the way to buff pages. Johnny couldn’t remember a single episode in his career that had gone even as far as cherry.

Second meal was pizza from a local place called Matthew’s, and it was pretty much the best pizza in Baltimore. Johnny circled the table sadly, knowing he should skip it. A year ago, he had hired a life coach who had put him on an intuitive eating program, dictating that Johnny should eat what he wanted when he wanted it. The result was that Johnny had intuitively eaten his way up to almost two hundred and thirty pounds. He watched Selene take a single slice of the crab pizza, which was kind of like a soufflé on a crust, rich and creamy and cheesy… She took exactly one bite, then left the slice on her plate, which only affirmed his belief that she wasn’t human. A succubus, maybe, or were women incubuses? Incubi? Borg?

Ben and Flip could tell themselves all they wanted that they weren’t trying to make a time-travel show, but they would need that sci-fi core audience to get a second season. Johnny Tampa knew this because he was the core audience, a diehard science fiction fan. Over the last five years, when he had been on what he now called his hiatus, he had spent most of his time in his Santa Monica condo, reading fantasy and science fiction. It was the time-travel angle that had interested him most in Mann of Steel, not that beggars could be choosers. Truthfully, his dream gig was that vampire show that HBO was doing, but they hadn’t even given him a courtesy audition. “Not ethereal enough,” they had said, and everyone knew what that was code for: too fat.

He decided to retreat to his banger, away from the temptations of second meal. He realized Selene had nibbled just enough pizza so that her breath would be all crab-and-cheese stink in their next scene, when they were supposed to kiss. Very clever, Selene, but had anyone else noticed? Flip and Ben melted in her presence. Lottie didn’t seem quite as impressed, but then Lottie didn’t like anyone. The fact was, it probably didn’t matter if everyone saw through Selene, if everyone realized what a phony and a bitch she was. It was understood that Mann of Steel had a shot only because Ben and Flip had been lucky enough to sign Selene before Baby Jane earned her that Golden Globe nomination.

Johnny wondered if they still considered themselves lucky, or if they had stopped to consider why Selene had been so convincing as an amoral, scheming teen whore. Johnny, who read the trades and the tabloids as obsessively as he read science fiction, knew all the rumors about Baby Jane. Moreover, he believed them, too. It was said that Selene had an affair with the director, which had been dicey, given that Selene was barely legal at the time. The bigger sticking point, however, Hollywood being Hollywood, was that the director was married to the screenwriter, and she tried to block the release. At least, they were married when the project started. Part of the reason the film had languished for two years was that its distribution rights had to be divvied up in the divorce. The screenwriter couldn’t decide, for a while, what she wanted more – to destroy Selene’s career or make a bundle off a low-budget movie with a star-making performance. Ultimately, she had chosen the bundle. Didn’t everyone?

Johnny had left The Boom Boom Room at the height of his popularity to pursue the movie offers that were pouring in. Of course, he hadn’t known it was the height, far from it. He thought there was still plenty of sky over his head. Separated from the part that had made him a household name, he seemed to lose whatever charisma he had. On television, he was handsome, in an interesting way. On a movie screen – he just disappeared, couldn’t hold the frame. “It’s kind of like Samson,” his agent had said. “When he cut his hair.” Which was confusing, because Johnny hadn’t cut his hair. He hadn’t changed at all, and that seemed to be the problem. It was as if the rules of the universe had been subverted, as if all the physical laws, such as gravity, had reversed when he wasn’t looking. Hot was cold. Up was down – and out. That’s when he started reading science fiction.

There was an envelope propped up in front of his mirror, addressed to him in care of the set’s street address, which few people knew. Inside was a recent tabloid, with a paper clip attached helpfully, pointing him to an article headlined: WHO SAYS MEN AGE WELL? There were photographs of Mel Gibson, Alec Baldwin, and, shit, him, circled with a big red pen mark, just in case he couldn’t find his own fat mug on the page. The photograph was at least six months old, when he was thirty pounds heavier. So unfair. He was – he looked in the mirror, lifted his chin, lifted it higher. There was the old jawline. Sort of.

Suddenly, it seemed as if the mirror was the only place to look, there was no angle in the trailer where he couldn’t see himself. He charged back to where the crew was eating, eager to show Ben the magazine. Selene gave him a triumphant little look, her eyes flicking to the rolled-up tabloid in his fist. He ignored her and, when he couldn’t find Ben, turned his attention on the icy blonde who had been lingering around set all day, Selene’s babysitter or bodyguard, take your pick. She looked to be in her early thirties, which was his demographic. She would have been in high school about the time he was playing high school senior Trip Winters on Boom Boom.

“Johnny Tampa,” he said.

“Really?”

“Really,” he said, with an aw-shucks grin, waiting to hear how much she had loved him when she was in high school, how his posters had covered her room.

“I mean, that’s your real name? Or did you change it from something?”

That question was so tired that he had long ago developed a standard answer. “I was born Johnny St. Petersburg, had to shorten it when I went into show business.”