Nick McCurry

You wake up, alone, to one more warm, sunny morning. A month after the separation, you’re used to it. You even like it. At least now, you don’t have to fret about a simple thing like who gets to shower first turning into an ugly shouting match.

Out your condo window, you see the iconic neon sign of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. You’d hoped to be facing the huge “H O L L Y W O O D” letters atop Mount Lee, but your housing budget couldn’t quite make that happen. Still, your new place rocks. It’s where you want to be, for now.

Last month, after you moved in, the glow from the Roosevelt kept you awake for several nights. Before long, though, your body acclimated to it and to all the charms and tortures emanating from this mecca of gaudiness you’ve chosen as home.

You rise from your bed, neither tired nor refreshed. You push out a dump, jump in the shower, dry off, and take a long look at yourself in the mirror. You decide against shaving. A little stubble will serve you well at tomorrow’s audition, you think.

You’re in your prime. Not handsome, exactly, but striking. You’re a casting director’s dream—dark but not swarthy, just shy of six feet, and solid but not musclebound. With the help of a makeup artist, you can play anywhere from thirty to fifty years old. James Cameron used you as a middle-aged, sexually repressed accountant. Quentin Tarantino thinks you’re perfect as a young, small-time, pistol-packing hoodlum.

Many moviegoers have started to recognize your face, but only the most avid film buffs know your name, which you think is okay. It’s a pleasure, not an annoyance, when the occasional fan interrupts your dining to ask for an autograph. You gladly sign, “Best wishes, Sally (or whoever). Nick McCurry.”

You’re making good money as a character actor—really good money—and who knows, you might still rise up to become a leading man. But you haven’t yet, and Molly the Ingenue got tired of waiting. She’s decided she has the stuff to land a Bradley Cooper or a James Franco. Fine, you think. She wants a celebrity, not an actor. But somewhere deep inside, you wish you could make it happen for you, and maybe even for her.

After a quick breakfast of wheat toast, strawberry jam, and coffee, you throw on an Iowa State T-shirt, a pair of khaki shorts, and your everyday Nikes—not the ones you run in—and head down five floors to the lobby to retrieve your mail. It appears to be the usual collection of junk. A Nordstrom men’s clothing catalog. A dues notice from the Screen Actors Guild. The eighth catalog of the month from Viking Cruise Lines—remember when you and Molly spent eight days on the Danube?—and the electric bill.

Then you see the last piece, a handwritten letter forwarded from the place you and Molly shared in the San Fernando Valley. The return address says it’s from Ankeny, Iowa, your hometown, but it’s not from your folks. It’s from Veronica.

“Dear Nicky,” she starts. No one has called you that since you moved west. “I saw on IMDB that you and Molly broke up. I check like once a week to see what they say about you. It’s a shame. Your breakup, I mean. I hope you’re dealing with it okay. These things can be hard, like it was when you dumped me!”

That was a long time ago, and you’ve never looked back. Ronnie would have been happy just staying in Ankeny and cranking out babies, which she did in short order with Phil, a high school jock a couple of years older than you. Your life is better. If you had stayed in Ankeny, you might have taught high school English and starred in local community theater. And maybe had babies with Ronnie. It wouldn’t have been bad, you suppose, if you had been willing to settle. But you weren’t. Thank God, you think.

The letter goes on. “There’s not much new in little old Ankeny. You should come back sometime. You’re about the biggest thing here. People talk about you all the time. They’d give you the key to the city if you showed up. I’d have a little something for you too, if you came. Love, Ronnie.”

On the next page, you find the picture she taped of herself, still looking as young as when you left, still sparkling, still with long raven hair, and still as shapely as ever, even after two babies. You didn’t have to guess about that. She was as naked as the day she was born.

*******

You tuck the letter into your back pocket, thinking about whether you should even answer. You and Ronnie haven’t spoken in years, and you’ve barely given her a thought as you’ve been building your career, one audition and one role at a time. Once you hooked up with Molly, you had no reason to think about Ronnie or anyone else. You thought you’d be able to hold on to Molly, even though you sensed her growing restlessness, but you were wrong.

You’re not interested in getting involved with anyone right now, least of all Ronnie. The relationship gurus all say that, after a breakup, you should take time to become reacquainted with yourself. Figure out who you are and what you want, they tell you, and then dip your toe in the water. Whatever you do, don’t jump off the diving board, don’t cannonball back into the riptide that modern dating has become. You see the wisdom in that. You decide not to respond to Ronnie at all.

Two weeks later, you find another letter from her in your mailbox. This one hasn’t been forwarded. She has your new address, which you find slightly unsettling.

“Your mom gave me your address,” she writes. “I always liked her. I told her I just wanted to make sure you’re doing all right and that maybe an old friend could be a safety net for you in the crazy town you’ve made your home.

“Come on back to Ankeny. Maybe we can create a spark or two! Love, Ronnie”

She includes a picture even more explicit than the first one.

You don’t want this to go on. You need to discourage her, but how?

Finally, you decide to write back.

“Dear Ronnie, It’s been a long time,” you write. “Good to know you’re alive and kicking. I don’t intend to return to Ankeny. My parents come out to see me a few times a year just to escape the cold and to get a change of pace from Iowa.

“I can’t imagine Phil knows you’re writing me, or that you’re including those pictures of yourself. I have some pleasant memories of you, but let’s just leave it at that.”

You put your letter in a large-format envelope along with one of your publicity stills, which you sign, “Best wishes, Ronnie. Nick McCurry.” Nothing more or less than you’d do for a stranger, which Ronnie is now, really. Or so you hope. It’s a little cold, but maybe she’ll get the message.

You make a mental note to call your mom. You want to tell her not to give Ronnie any more personal information about you, but you get distracted and forget.

*******

A month goes by, and you don’t give Ronnie a second thought. You’ve landed a part in a new J. J. Abrams movie, and shooting begins in three weeks. You’re busy learning your lines and trying to understand the world he’s creating, something about aliens invading Earth to pirate off all the water. It’s the biggest part you’ve taken on, a Space Force fleet commander known for his expertise in tactical space warfare. As an actor, you shouldn’t really care, but you’ll get to wear the coolest uniform! Spandex tight, and black with purple accents.

Midafternoon, you need a break, so you decide to go for a run. The sidewalks aren’t too crowded, so you make good time, for you anyway. Four miles in just under thirty-two minutes. You slow down shortly before you return to the condo and take a sip of water. Then you notice her.

Ronnie is standing in front of your condo, arms crossed and tapping her foot. She hasn’t spotted you. You use your iPhone to track your mileage, so you take it out of its holder on your arm to call your doorman, a guy burly enough to double as a security guard in a pinch.

“Jack,” you say, “did you talk with that brunette standing outside the building?”

He tells you yes, and she was pleasant at first, but she got more agitated the longer she waited. She insisted you were upstairs and I was protecting you. I asked her to leave, but she refused. I had to give her a little assist to leave the building, he says. She’s been hovering around the door ever since.

“You want I should call the police, maybe get her picked up for loitering?”

You think about it but tell him no, you might as well take care of this yourself, and you might as well do it now. And so you walk toward Ronnie, warily. You have no idea who this person is anymore, but she’s motivated enough to come looking for you after you blew her off. Is she carrying a gun, or a knife? Hell, she might even be looking to disfigure you with acid, you think.

You forego any pleasantries. From ten feet away, you ask her what she’s doing in Hollywood.

“I’m just looking to reconnect,” she tells you.

I’m not interested, you say. You ask her if she remembers the Garbo line: I want to be alone. “That’s me in a nutshell right now,” you tell her. “So please just go back to Iowa. Who’s looking after your kids, anyway?”

She tells you she left them with Phil, and she has no intention of going back. She made up a story about a girls’ weekend in Chicago. Phil has turned out to be a zero, working as a clerk at the local Ace Hardware. After watching you make something of your life, she has bigger dreams, she says, and you’re the only one she knows who might make them happen.

“Look, Ronnie, I can’t help you,” you say. “It’s all I can do to manage my own career. And I don’t think you know what you’re facing. Sure, I get some parts now, but for two years, I might as well have been in Ankeny. I could have waited tables and walked dogs there just as easily as I did here. It takes a long time and a lot of persistence to get even the slightest foothold in this town. Frankly, I don’t think you’ve got what it takes.”

She tells you she’s not looking to make it in Hollywood, but she does have what it takes to make a better life for herself.

She reminds you that, seven years ago, you and she made a sex tape hotter than anything she’s seen from Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, or Kim Kardashian. If you want your career to keep moving forward, you’ll need to pay her twenty percent of whatever you make for the next decade. If you do, the tape will never see the light of day.

Now, you’re mad. You tell her to get her ass back to Ankeny. You’ll take your chances. She storms off, saying you haven’t heard the last of her.

*******

Two weeks later, you’re whipping up a quick dinner with TMZ on for background noise. As the vegetable oil heats up in your wok, you hear Harvey Levin.

“What up-and-coming actor’s roll in the hay is the latest to make it to the internet? Stay tuned.”

The answer, of course, is Nick McCurry. So Ronnie’s done it, you think. You do a quick search to find the video, which, if nothing else, brings back a lot of memories. There’s Ronnie on top of you, and then you on top of her, and then both of you standing in Kama Sutra position 119. Not the kind of thing you want your mom and dad and the good people of Ankeny to see, that’s for sure.

You call your mom to see how she’s taking it. She doesn’t want to talk about it, she says. You assure her that, in today’s fast-paced media environment, this story will be gone in two days. You prove to be right. Your mom doesn’t forgive you, exactly, but she gets philosophical. It’s just life in the twenty-first century, she rationalizes to herself. Don’t let it happen again.

*******

A week later, your agent calls. It’s just as he predicted, he says. Directors are seeing you in a whole new light. David Fincher is remaking The Thomas Crown Affair, and he wants you in the lead. He thinks you’ll steam up the screen way more than Steve McQueen or Pierce Brosnan ever could have.

The last you knew, Molly the Ingenue hadn't landed her Bradley Cooper or James Franco. You hear she's doing her best, though, crashing A-list parties when she can.

You and your Thomas Crown leading lady, Alexandra Daddario, fall madly in love and marry in Monte Carlo. On the strength of the movie, People Magazine names you its sexiest man of 2023. Not bad for a guy who's just striking, not handsome, you think to yourself.

In Ankeny, things don’t turn out so well for Ronnie, you hear. She’s the laughingstock of the town, your mom says. The only one not laughing is Phil, who sends Ronnie packing the second he sees the tape.

You decide you need to thank Ronnie for all she's done for you. One day, between pictures, you pull out a publicity still from Thomas Crown, one with you and Alexandra skimpily clad and tightly embraced.

You sign it. “Best wishes, Ronnie. Thanks for everything. Nick McCurry.”

You decide to show Ronnie she’s special. You send the picture FedEx.