I was never emotional to end a job. That was part of not getting attached. You were just working. When you left, you’d be working somewhere else.
I didn’t know what to do with the sadness that was soaking into my heart. It felt so full, I could wring it out like a sponge. What did people do with sadness like this? How did they dry it out?
When we got to the end of the road—to the same place where Jack had given me that piggyback ride back at the start—Jack cut the engine, but neither of us got out.
I explained everything to him, and what it all meant, and why we had to do all the things we now had to do.
He tried to argue with me. “I don’t want Bobby to replace you.”
“He’s not replacing me. He’s not going to, like, sleep on your floor in a white nightgown.”
“Thank God.”
“It’ll be a whole different deal because there’s no more pretending. He’ll just stand around, secret-service style.”
“That might be worse.”
“It will be,” I said.
“I get why we have to tell my parents, and I get why we need to step everything up. But I think you should stay.”
“I should stay?”
“Stay with me and be protected.”
“By my own company?”
“You’re in danger now.”
“That’s not how it works. I’m only in danger because I’m near you. Once I leave, the threat level’s totally different.”
Jack thought about it, then argued some more, then finally gave in. Our whole meticulous setup felled by a homicidal part-time corgi breeder.
“So this is our last day together,” Jack said, when he’d run out of ways to argue.
“Yep. I’m leaving after dinner.”
“After dinner? That feels fast.”
“The faster, the better.”
“And then—I won’t see you after that?”
“Nope.”
Then Jack asked me the strangest question. “Does this mean,” he asked, “you’re not coming to Thanksgiving?”
Thanksgiving? What a weird thought. “Of course I’m not coming to Thanksgiving,” I said. And then, because he didn’t seem to understand, I said, “I’m not coming to anything at all—ever again.”
Jack turned to read my eyes.
“When jobs end, they just end,” I said. “You don’t, like, become friends on Facebook or anything. Robby will finish out the job—and then you’ll go back to your albino moose, and I’ll go to Korea and eat black bean noodles, and it’ll be like we never met.”
“But we did meet, though,” Jack said.
“That doesn’t really matter. This is how this works.”
Jack looked very serious. “So what you’re telling me is this is the last day we’ll ever see each other?”
I mean, yes. That was what I was telling him. “Pretty much,” I said.
“Okay, then,” Jack said, nodding. “Then let’s make it a good one.”
* * *
JACK INSISTED THAT he carry me to the beach, for old times’ sake, even though I would’ve been fine in my sneakers—and I just let him.
We walked along the shore for a while, picking up pieces of petrified wood as well as rocks and pebbles and driftwood. The wind was as constant as the river current, and I couldn’t help but feel soothed by its fluttering.
After a while, we came to a washed-up tree trunk, and Jack decided to sit on it.
I sat next to him.
Usually, when you see people for the last time, you don’t know it’s the last time. I wasn’t sure if this was better or worse. But I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to talk about something ordinary. Something we’d be talking about if it were just any old day.
“Can I ask you something about being an actor?” I asked then.
“Sure. Shoot.”
“How do you make yourself cry?”
Jack tilted his head at me like that was a pretty good question. “Okay. The best way is to get so into your character that you feel what he’s feeling—and then if he’s feeling the things that make people cry … suddenly you’re crying, too.”
“How often does that happen?” I asked.
“Five percent of the time. But I’m working on it.”
“That’s not much.”
Jack nodded, watching the river. “Yeah. Especially on a movie set. Because there are so many distractions—so many cranes and booms and crew members and extras everywhere. And it’s too cold or too hot or they put a weird gel in your hair that’s kind of itchy. When it’s like that, you have to work a lot harder.”