On The Way Out

“Six months to a year.”

The words echo in her head in tune with the muffled noises of traffic. The car passes through the busy streets of downtown L.A., taking the familiar path up into the hills she has driven near daily for the past forty years, or since the royalties she earned after Silverstreet let her buy a house there. She had been young then, only twenty-three, and beautiful. That had been part of the appeal, she supposed. Her beauty. And she had thought it would never end, this beauty, this life of hers. 

“Six months to a year.”  

The car pulls into the driveway and she thanks the driver, offering him what had once been a coveted smile. Even now, she refuses to join the ranks of celebrities who are known to be rude to workers. Her mother would roll over in her grave if she didn’t thank the taxi driver, or the delivery drivers, the store clerks, everyone who wandered into her path. She pads her pocket as she steps out and feels the outline of her phone, and that thing she would rather not consider, still secure inside it. The sleek black sedan pulls out of the driveway, heading down the streets and away from the residential area. 

The phone rings just as she’s unlocking her door. With a sigh of frustration, she sets down her handbag, careful to not damage the leather, and fishes the phone from her pocket with her left hand, while her right fumbles with the keys. Her heart skips a beat as she reads the name. Janice. This could be just what she needs.

“Alva speaking.” 

“Hi,” Janice says on the other end. 

Alva bristles at the casual greeting. She’s been with Janice for five years now, since Howard retired, and has never been very impressed by the woman's manners. “Do you have something for me?”

Janice hesitates. “Well, I have some interesting scripts you could take a look at. Some compelling characters I think you would be good for. If you’re interested I could probably get you an aud-”

“I don’t audition.” Alva insists for what feels like the thousandth time. “I’m offer only.” She turns the key and pushed the door open. Janice doesn’t respond. The door slams shut behind Alva and she shrugs off her coat, leaving her handbag on a shelf by the door. “Was there anything else?” She asks, and almost stops in her tracks at the coldness of her voice. Since when does she speak to people that way?

Janice sighs through the phone, and it’s muffled, but Alva still catches it. She crosses the living room into the kitchen.

“There was, actually.” Janice starts, her voice strained, even through the phone. “I just got a casting call for a remake of one of your old movies.” 

Irritation flashes through Alva, and she reaches for a glass on one of the higher shelves. Remakes have been all the rage for years now, so it had to happen eventually. “Oh?” She opens the fridge, and her fingers close around the cold glass neck of a bottle. “Which one.”

“Silverstreet.” 

Alva lets go of the bottle and shuts the fridge. She steps away, and pulls her phone from her ear. For a moment, she stares at the screen, Janice's voice through the phone growing fainter. Ending the call, she puts the phone on the counter, and crosses the room. She pulls a bottle of whiskey from a cabinet and opens it.  

The first mouthful burns on the way down, by the third, she’s numb to it.

--------

She was seventeen when she came to this city in the passenger's seat of a producer's car. Then, she’d thought it a blessing to be sitting beside that man, who promised her everlasting glory if she followed him home. It was better than Rhinelander, her hometown where her mother had reigned over her life with an iron fist. But the endless pageants had gotten her somewhere. In this very seat, with this man, who would cement her into stardom. 

Only two years later, she found herself living in a shoebox apartment in west Hollywood, sharing a room with two other girls and working herself to the bone at a nearby diner. She’d thought there was nothing worse than the oppressive control of her mother and the sleepy nature of the town she grew up in. She hadn’t known at seventeen what she knew at nineteen, what she would learn over and over through the next decade of her life. Powerful men get bored, and when they do, there is no going back.

Her days off were rare and terrifying. Most of them consisted of auditions, desperately trying to claw her way back in. She’d done one movie before the producer, who had spotted her in the Miss Teen Wisconsin pageant lineup and offered her a ride to the city of stars, got bored. On one of those days off, she went to see it. The premiere had come and gone, and she had not been invited. It was a small role, merely ten minutes of screen time, but the second she saw her own face projected onto that silver screen, her heart took a running leap. She leaned back in her seat, a warmth flooding through her. The theater was half empty, but it was a Tuesday afternoon, that was to be expected. From what she was hearing, the movie was doing well. And though there were few people in the room with her, every single one of them was watching her.

She watched the next screening of the movie an hour later. And the one after that. Every time, she stayed through the end credits, just to watch as her name appeared on screen. 

--------

Alva leaves the kitchen, battle in hand and makes her way through the downstairs lounge and up to her office. She doesn’t use it much, though Janice has been encouraging her to set up a video background so she can do self tapes. Alva shuts down every conversation of that nature. There’s too much stuff in here, anyway. Shelves line the walls behind and on either side of the dust-covered desk. She stares at the shelves through the open door, at the trophies and awards she has given up on cleaning. At the empty space on the shelf directly behind the desk. She’s been saving a spot on her shelf for years. Now, she supposes it will remain empty. 

“They’ll want you for a small role.” Janice said weeks later, sat in the agent's office. “No audition required, of course. The fans will go wild when they see you again.”

“Oh, sure.” Alva’s eyes drift towards the window, searching for a distraction from the nausea churning within her. 

“They start filming in January.” 

Alva does the math, her thoughts murky. They’ve been like that all week. It’s the meds, and she knows that. Still, she curses herself for the fog. 

“Alva?”

She drags her gaze back to Janice, the sudden movement sending waves through her body. She fights to suppress the urge to vomit. 

“Yes?”

“What do you want me to tell them?”

Alva forces a smile, the same smile she gave to the driver when she left his car just twenty minutes earlier. “Of course.” 

“Great.” Janice begins to type something, and Alva returns her gaze to the window. August still has the city firmly in its grip, and she still hasn’t told Janice that she might not make it to see the new year. 

On her way back through the city and towards home, she debates the merit of telling someone.  

Sat in her office with a bottle of rosé, she scrolls through contacts, her fingers hovering over the screen. There’s her brother, the one who left for the Army when Alva was twelve, but they haven’t had a real conversation since their mothers funeral, an event she’d attended out of pure guilt, and left unfashionably early. There’s the handful of co-stars she’s been friendly with since whatever project brought them together, but other than industry events and the occasional drink, she never reaches out. A yoga instructor, a director, a former flame she never quite got up the courage to delete. 

She puts the phone face down on the table and drinks, directly from the bottle. She’s given up on glasses. There is no one around to see, and she will not have to live with the shame for much longer. 

She calls a lawyer. 

--------

Silverstreet changed everything. Richard Weiss, with his old fashioned suits and his wild ideas, upended her existence as the west Hollywood waitress. Howard had been new to the business then, and almost unconnected, but he knew Richard Weiss, and through the acquaintance, her headshots had ended up on his table, and he had given her Ellie. 

She had adored Ellie, resourceful and alluring Ellie. The world had loved Ellie too, loved her. 

Silverstreet swept the world up clean that year, and everywhere Richard Weiss went, he went with Alva on his arm. The world was wide open, welcoming her into it’s embrace, and she let herself fall. 

Everywhere she went, they knew her name. Everywhere she looked, she saw her face, and she knew it had spread so much father that just L.A. She knew that the theater she’s grown up going to was now showing Silverstreet to crowds that might include her mother, and the thought was golden. 

She practiced acceptance speeches and red carpet poses, she moved out of the shoebox apartment and into the house in the hills. She won awards, and Richard Weiss promised her a role in his next film. It would be her film, he promised, more so than Silverstreet was. Everyone in this city would know her name, it would be paved into it’s bones for generations to come. 

But powerful men get bored. 

--------

The thing in the mirror is not Alva Evers, but she’ll have to do. She watches the husk down the last of her coffee and leaves the dressing room. It will be her last day on set. Her only day. It’s a small scene, a passing of the torch, as Janice described it, one Ellie to another. The words churn in her gut. Ellie belongs to her. At least the nausea has subsided. She stopped taking the pills weeks ago. They were useless anyway. 

She makes it onto the set, a dingy apartment in an unnamed city. And there she is, practically bouncing on her heels. Sadie Wilson, twenty years old, green eyed and brown haired. She smiles when she sees Alva step onto set. It’s a genuine smile, bright and alive, the kind of smile Alva never learned how to do. 

“Ms. Evers.” Her voice is lower than expected, dark and luscious. Her Ellie will be different. 

“Alva.” She demands, and reaches out a hand. The young woman pulls her into a hug. 

When she lets go, Sadie Wilson takes Alva’s hand in her own. “I will take good care of her.” 

Alva smiles. She does the scene, and when they call it a wrap for the day, she walks out of the lot. Everything gets left behind. Ellie and Silverstreet and Richard fucking Weiss, the imprint she was supposed to have left on this godforsaken city. There is a new generation, a new rising star. 

There are empty spots on her shelves, more than she likes to let herself notice. 

They will never be filled.