The Beginning

Ch. 65 - The quiet

Keanu squints. The lighting in the warehouse where he is sitting to do the first of his promotional interviews for A Walk in the Clouds is somehow both bright and fuzzy simultaneously. His hair is longer than it was in Speed, and when he's not in costume, he looks like he's just rolled out of bed.

The woman seated in front of him is giggly, with flushed complexion, struggling to get a sentence out without a slight stutter.

The explosion of Speed continues to reverberate and the attention paid to him on a day-to-day basis has spiked. The usual progression at this point in a celebrity's timeline is toward a more polished wardrobe, more expensive haircuts, teeth that grow ever more luminescent with each application of special gel provided by special cosmetic dentists-to-the-stars. Yet here he sits, baggy, black, nondescript tee scooping diagonally off his neck, hair standing on end as though a big brother had just rubbed it with a balloon and ran off with his favorite baseball cards, laughing.

*"You don't like to go out when you're working on location?"

The entertainment reporter, Joan Anderson, did little to hide her disbelief, no doubt having read the same gossip rags everyone else had read about crazy nights out in Hollywood. They aren't entirely lies. Of course he likes to go out when on location.

I go out. I went out just...

His forehead wrinkles and he scratches his freshly shaved chin, distracted momentarily by the rolling hills of Napa projected onto the low budget green screen raised behind her. Actually, he can't recall the last time he was out with this cast. He can't recall going out with them at all.

*"Uhhh, not this time," he quiets, his mind faraway in Chicago. "Not on this film."

*"People magazine rated you this year as one of the fifty most beautiful people in the whole world. How does that make you feel?"

"Who? People what?""

"People magazine."

"Ah-uh, who cares?" he cringes, shaking his head in disgust, before catching the tightened stare of his publicist off to the side.

She's always there.

"You don't like the magazines? Like, does it bother you when they write things about you?"

With pinched expression, he turns it around, forcing himself into a small nod. "No, it's very flattering. It's very flattering, yeah."

A rapid glance back to the side reveals the now loosened arms of his publicist, the crease between her eyes relaxed.

He's back in the game.

"You're regarded as a real hunk. I mean, you've got lots of fans that think you're really hot. How does that feel?"

What the fuck?

"That feels good, uh..." tugging at his already loose neckline, there's a faint taste of bile in his mouth. "That's, uh, that's very nice," he swallows a nervous chuckle. "I have low self esteem, so if someone thinks that I'm beautiful, then, you know, it helps for like a millisecond."

He peers up at Joan from underneath dark, albeit short, lashes, and she giggles again.

He has grown accustomed to these reactions from women, so accustomed he still doesn't pick up on the strength of his magnetism to the fairer sex.

As word got out about the filming location, fans began to trickle in, pretending the drive out into the vast expanses of these hills is part of their daily drive to the grocery store. Business at the small convenience store next to the gas station, the only gas station in town, picked up. There is a reported increase in absences at the sole high school that serves the four nearest townships, as more girls opted for the wrinkled leathery hot dogs off of the store's roller grills for lunch, hoping for a glimpse of the star on a break. As such, he ventured out of his bed and breakfast less and less these days. Still, he maintains an air of humor with each of these intrusions, chatting the girls up as he signs the backs of receipts, frilled-edged sheets of paper torn from chemistry notebooks, the backs of CD liners, whatever they could find in time to thrust in front of their imaginary boyfriend.