Juno
(647) 555-0947
Seriously, dude, you won’t regret a gym membership 🙂
Felipe smiled wistfully to himself, thinking how ironic it was that that career advice was directly responsible for where he was today. In the days after he met Juno, he’d been saving money to make first and last month’s rent on an apartment. Instead, he decided joining a gym was a more pressing need.
Soon, he began to work out for hours instead of just popping in to bathe, and his more toned body didn’t go unnoticed on a few sets where he worked as an extra. It also didn’t go unnoticed in the precious few auditions he got, one of which was a speaking role, which led to bigger speaking roles, which enabled him to quit that god-awful fast-food job once and for all.
Eighteen months later came the audition and subsequent starring role for Boxcar, which raked in $100 million in revenue on a paltry $7.5 million budget. As an indie film, it wasn’t expected to even register at the box office, let alone rule the summer that year and catapult Felipe into stardom.
His agent later told him he’d been chosen despite being an unknown because while he read for the role as well as any other actor, production wouldn’t have to wait months for him to bulk up.
She was responsible for all of this, Felipe thought, recalling how Juno’s hair whipped in the wind as they walked through the downtown core on the day they’d met. But this probably isn’t even her number anymore. He slipped the post-it back in his wallet and put out his cigarette, rising to his feet. Another few days of shooting and he’d be on a flight back home to Toronto.
***********
Juno
“Hey Lucy, last time I checked, Carter Amos isn’t the name of a book. I only do book reviews. What gives?” Juno Delfina asked her editor as she strode into her downtown Toronto office. Lucy Oyekan sighed loudly, knowing from the moment she’d e-mailed Juno her latest assignment that this conversation was inevitable.
“Look, Juno, I’ll be straight and to the point with you,” she began.
“You could have done that in the e-mail,” Juno smirked.
“I’m a hopeless optimist,” Lucy replied. “The readership for GTA Life is getting older and older, and it’s harder for us to stay relevant when we’re a fortnightly magazine. We’re struggling to compete with those free commuter dailies.”
“Luce, are we in trouble?” Juno asked.
“Not yet, but it’s my job to make sure we don’t get in trouble. Part of that is anticipating when the hottest action star to ever come out of Canada will be back in town and premiering a new film here.”
“Okay, but why am I assigned…” Juno looked at her printout. “Holy crap, a 4000-word feature?! I’m only saying it this way because we’ve been friends for so long, but Luce, who the fuck will want to read 4000 words on Carter Amos??”
Lucy simply typed his name into a search engine and turned her monitor toward Juno. On the screen was a large, black-and-white photo of the star wearing no shirt and a pair of unzipped blue jeans that were a centimeter away from falling off his hips. Juno pursed her lips as she observed every muscled cut on his bare upper half.
“Okay, I see your point,” she conceded. “But there’s nothing more to this guy than being jacked and making blow-’em-up flicks.”
“You need to read fewer books and turn on the TV, sweetie,” Lucy said. “He’s single-handedly supporting impoverished people downtown and in all the Toronto suburbs with that farm of his in Pickering. You’ll find out when you write this up.” Juno sighed.
“Well, I’m sure half the female staff here would love to see dreamboy up close,” she argued. “Why am I on this?”
“Because he’s famously strong-willed with the press, and you’re the only one irreverent enough to butt heads with him,” Lucy answered. “I mean, he’s not rude; he’s just smart and he knows how to steer an interview–not to mention how to shut down journalists if he wants to.”
“So I’m stuck with this because of my balls?”
“Yes,” Lucy smiled, as she reclined back in her desk chair. “Brass ones. Call his publicist to set up a phone interview first. Make him talk as long as you possibly can because it might be the only quotes you’ll have to work with. He’s intensely private and he’s not going to invite you to his farm, that’s for damn sure.”
Juno whiled away the entire day rewriting and touching up other pieces, knowing full well she was procrastinating on her latest assignment. She briefly considered checking her personal e-mail to see whether any publishers had replied to her manuscript submissions but she didn’t want to depress herself any further.
It was already a craptacular day when I walked in, and it’s gonna be another craptacular week of pretending I’m interested in Carter count-my-abs Amos.
All she’d wanted to do when she was in school for creative writing was become a novelist. Or a short story writer. Or anything short of a reviewer for other people’s novels and short stories, which was a type of purgatory only she and a bunch of career bridesmaids were confined to. This was not where she thought she’d be at 32.
But approaching publishers with her work was another level of fresh hell, because that was like asking 1000 people out on a date and having every one of them turn you down. After getting divorced two years ago, Juno felt like she’d already had more than her share of disappointments, both personally and professionally.
At about 4 p.m. when she’d run out of every other conceivable task she could work on, she picked up the printout from that morning, knowing Lucy was trusting her with a major assignment.
I am not into this, but I can’t fuck it up and have the magazine floundering in a couple of months. She shot off an e-mail to Carter Amos’s publicist. The next morning, the first thing in her inbox was a reply with a callback date and time, when Carter, himself, would pick up the phone.
Eight in the evening?? Juno almost cursed at her computer screen. Who the hell schedules an interview for 8 p.m.? Screw it, I’m going home early.
***********
Felipe/Carter
The sun was beginning to set, and Felipe put his nose in the air as he strolled amongst the long rows of crops with his farm manager, Jakub Szymanski. Jakub was now 24 but Felipe had found him as a teenager on the streets of downtown Toronto, having escaped his home after his 40-something stepmom came onto him. It hadn’t been the first time either.
An established actor by then, Felipe let Jakub stay in his trailer on a movie set on the sly, just until he had enough money saved to rent a place. Felipe had already been thinking of starting a public service farm at the time. When Jakub expressed to him during one of the afternoons they hung out that he wanted to get a science degree in agriculture, Felipe told him to apply and not worry about tuition fees.
“There’s nothing like that early September smell, huh?” Jakub smiled at him. “Everything’s fresh and ripe and just about ready to be picked.”
“It smells like life,” Felipe smiled back.
“Oh, speaking of life, Tameka said she’d have mine if I forgot to pass this message on to you,” Jakub dug in his pocket for the piece of paper he’d taken notes on earlier that day.