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“Collecting the whole set, Nguyen? Preparing to feast on my human tragedy like some kind of cheap jacket wearing Dementor?” Sarah Lynn asserted fiercely before collapsing on the sofa across from Diane. She plunked down an iced Starbucks drink. Just hearing her order it had awakened the broke, angry 20-something barista that lived in Diane’s chest.
“I don’t want to make this weird,” Diane leaned across the table, wholly expecting to meet tell-tale glassy or red eyes, but Sarah Lynn looked sober, if somewhat tired, “But you remember you’re the one who invited me here, right Sarah Lynn?”
“Oh I know,” Sarah Lynn snorted, stirring her drink. The ice chattered. “I was kinda hoping somebody would overhear and think I’m a badass.”
“Okay?” Diane craned her head to look around the cafe. “I guess a couple people might be looking but I think we’ll be fine. If you want to go somewhere else, you can tell me.”
“I was joking; I’ve become hilarious in the face of all this death bullshit.” Sarah Lynn paused to take a long, dramatic, and loud sip of her peppermint mocha white chocolate something something extra extra something iced coffee, then set it down, leaned back and spread her arms. “It’s about time we started failing the Bechdel Test: let’s talk BoJack.”
“Hmmm, an interview failing the Bechdel Test? I never thought of it like that. I mean, the Bechdel Test is more about finding enough of a connection between two fictional women that a romantic or sexual relationship could be feasible but-“
“Oh, well you know me, Slutty Sarah Lynn, constantly having illicit lesbian relations with any dumbo who interviews me. It’s always feasible.”
“You know what, the Bechdel Test doesn’t even make sense in the real world. I mean, how many women do you know who only ever talk about men? And we all have names,” Diane leaned in, pulling her own drink closer to herself, balancing her elbows on the table, “It’s just for stories.”
“It was nice,” Sarah Lynn said quietly, “the thing Princess Carolyn said about stories. At the wake.”
“Do you want to talk about that?”
Sarah Lynn shook her head.
“I’ve been recording since a little before you came over,” Diane explained, gesturing at where her phone sat in the middle of the table, voice memo open. “Is that okay?”
Sarah Lynn nodded, biting her lip.
The recording marched on, the wavelength clinging to the flat line in the middle. Not recording silence but not recording anything of meaning either. In 2006, Diane’s myspace description had read “is there anything better than a loud quiet place?” In 2018, Diane wanted people who talked loudly or quietly about their supposedly fulfilling lives to shut up or at least be honest.
“You do have something you want to talk about, right?” Diane leaned back and crossed her legs. There was no point watching the recording.
“I’m famous,” Sarah Lynn said, obviously, “And that shit was crazy. Every dipshit reporter in Hollywoo wants to know. When somebody asks, I just tell them who I’m wearing.”
Diane nodded. That certainly explained why Teen Vogue had reported about what Sarah Lynn had worn to the funeral without even quoting her. She had chalked it up to bad taste.
“I’ve gotta tell somebody something. Or they’ll keep making stuff up. I wanted to tell somebody who wasn’t a fetishizing goblin.”
“So, let’s talk.” Diane tried to make her posture more open like her therapist told her to when she had joint sessions with Mr. Peanutbutter. “Where do you want to start?”
“I was totally gonna come in like lightning with these beautiful speeches and shit but that was before I didn’t sleep last night so just keep asking me questions from your tacky notebook,” Sarah Lynn replied, gesturing at the holographic, pastel-colored smartphone-shaped Girl Croosh memo pad that Diane hated.
“So. The movie. What do you think about the movie, then?” It was a dumb question, but she’d written it anyway. Because The People wanted to know. Stefani Stilton had told her so. She refused to accept Diane’s usual approach. She’d crept beside Diane, put a hand on her shoulder, and maintained eye contact for an unreasonable amount of time. Then she’d explained herself and left, demanding that she “Bring home The Juice, for once, Diane. I know you can do it, girl.”
“First of all, it’s made by the fetishizing Goblin King. But I get royalties, so I guess I’m okay with it.”
Diane raised her eyebrows and snorted. Then immediately felt like an ass. She stared down at her memopad, tried to play it off casual.
“There are rumors that you left the test screening. Is that true?”
“Yeah, but only because it was stupid. I told them to take out the part where Lana Del Ray does this cover of the goddamned Horsin’ Around song and the actress playing me—she’s not even famous; I think she’s a character actress—cries buckets. They said they paid Lana too much to take it out so I said ‘give me a cut or I’ll set this board room on fire.’ I’m gonna buy a memorial bench with it.”
Diane uncrossed her legs and leaned across the table.
“That’s thoughtful, but it might be better to donate to a responsible—“
“It’s a memorial bench for me because I’m dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Diane replied, thinking of the six voicemails of varying lengths that she couldn’t reply to and would never delete.
“Yeah,” Sarah Lynn’s tired, sober eyes met Diane’s, “I know. Everybody’s ‘sorry.’”
“I-”
“No! I’m sorry. I came here to talk, not be a total bitch.” Sarah Lynn reached out to lay a hand on Diane’s arm at about the same time Diane folded it across her chest. Her nails hit the table and she started tapping.
“Alright.” Diane adjusted her glasses, changed the page. Wished she was as calm as she pretended to be at work, on her book tour, with BoJack. “Do you want to talk about your comedy tour? I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but I think it’s brave of you to be out there creatively right now.”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
“Is there anything you’d like to say about it?”
“It’s about death and child abuse. Also come see it. Reserve your tickets on ihatesarahlynn.biz today!”
“That’s awesome. Well, I mean those are… horrible things, but I’m sure it’s gonna be a good show. I bet BoJack would’ve liked it.”
“You think so?”
“Totally. You know him; would’ve laughed at his own funeral. Well… not before reeling with the existential horror of it all and trying to drink away the panic and cursing his mother for not dying first and- it was my fault she showed up anyway. I was responsible for guests and I didn’t even realize and Mr. Peanut Butter said it was okay, but how could it be? How could I have forgotten when it was so—” Diane faltered, realizing that it was more than a little self-absorbed to focus on guilt and grief when Sarah Lynn had been there, had nearly died herself.
Diane cradled her coffee cup in her hands and lifted it to her lips, letting her Americano take her somewhere warm and calm and away. She knew the logic of it, the way a hot drink could mimic human touch, but she let the calm come, without becoming obsessed with why. Her eyes flicked up to look at Sarah Lynn or rather, at the coffee sitting in her manicured hands, frowning as she imagined the ice inside diluting all the syrups.
Diane inhaled, then exhaled, following the directions from Mr. Peanut Butter’s Awareness Tapes: Or Learn How to Fight Fear, Anxiety, & Anger with Mindfulness Featuring Hollywoo Celebrity Mr. Peanut Butter . His voice could never lose its manic edge, its audibly present smile, but his reading was slow and clear, his practice breaths long and deep. At first, she’d tried it out just to support him. Then, in the face of endless funeral arrangements and late nights trying to convince herself that staying alive, blogging, and Mr. Peanut Butter were enough, she had found it strangely grounding.
“What BoJack would think of it,” Sarah Lynn started slowly, “that doesn’t matter. He was a shit person and he did stuff that messed me up. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to feel. Sometimes when I practice the show, I imagine him there as like a ghost or a zombie or some shit and I can’t do it.”
Diane thought about her crusade against Hank Hippopopalous, about the last two years, about all the red flags in the shit he’d said when they drank together. She gripped her coffee cup and against all biological odds, did not feel comforted by it this time. Had she made an exception?
“I’m sorry for what happened to you.” Diane finally said, too late.
Sarah Lynn shrugged.
“You may not believe it,” Diane wanted to make eye contact and give her a warm smile when she said this, like she would have done if Todd were sitting across from her. Instead, she stared at her uneven, slightly crusty nails. “But I didn’t come here to talk about BoJack.”
“You didn’t?”
“I didn’t,” Diane replied solemnly. “I came to hear what you wanted to say—your story. And if it helps you to tell it, it’s worth telling. So you can take it back from the Goblin Kings. And BoJack.”
“Can you rephrase that so it sounds like I said it? That’d be a bomb pull quote.”
Diane decided to not bore her by saying it was unethical or that it was possible Sarah Lynn’s own words could have more impact. She nodded.
Sarah Lynn smiled. “Alright. Good.”
An amiable silence fell over their little table. Stefani Stilton would probably hate that this was going at ‘Diane Speed’ but what kind of person expected someone to ‘spill the tea’ on their complex, toxic relationship to the recently cremated remains of a member of the exclusive ‘Top Ten Fictional Dads Who Raised Me Better than My Real Father as Ranked by a 35 Year Old Ex-Reporter Who Just Wants Some Clicks (Yes, there will be Gifs)’ club to a mostly-stranger at Starbucks.
“I was serious when I messaged you about doing this as a series,” Diane shifted her leg, mumbled an apology when it brushes against Sarah Lynn’s, and continued, “We don’t have to get through everything today. And we definitely don’t have to do it all here.”
“Psht, my deepest inner feelings are always up for public consumption. I run my own twitter, don’t I? That’s authenticity.” Sarah Lynn waved her free hand up and down, “But I am kinda realizing this was a bad idea. That guy over there is totally checking me out.”
Diane couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “I didn’t expect us to be able to do an interview here. Just to lay out some plans.”
Sarah Lynn looked up at Diane through fluttering eyelashes and asked, with all the sweetness only a former child star could muster, “Can they be evil plans?”
Diane snorted. “Sure. Why not?”
“I knew you would understand, Ms. Peanut Butter-Nguyen.” She blew on her nails and narrowed her eyes. “Women need to be more evil these days. Hashtag Childhood Murdering Witch Solidarity and shit.”
“It’s Nguyen, but other than that, I wholeheartedly agree,” Diane replied, chuckling. Sarah Lynn really had started that hashtag in reference to some creep who had tweeted her twenty times a day calling her a witch and childhood murderer. “He doesn’t still tweet you, does he?”
“He does.”
“Yikes.” Diane shuddered into the mouthpiece of her coffee cup as she took another sip. She plunked it down in a pitch perfect imitation of Drunk Diane. This somehow gave her the courage to maintain eye contact as she continued, “So. The evil plans. Who are we hexing?”
“Ethan Around.”
“Ahhh, I see. So.” She tapped her index finger on Girl Croosh’s gaudy mockery of a reporter’s notebook. “I think I understand how you feel. But, Stefani says our audience needs direct statements, even if I think readers are smarter than that.”
Sarah Lynn grinned savagely, stabbing her straw into the ice at the bottom of her glass. “I think Ethan Around fucking sucks. I haven’t even finished it because it sucks so much.”
“Well, you beat me. I haven’t watched any of it. I couldn’t even finish the teaser because I kept hearing… you know, BoJack in my head. What would he say? But I’ll never know. I can guess but it’d feel like… like writing a character. And I don’t like writing about characters, you know?”
“I get it, trust me.”
“Sorry about…” Diane knew she shouldn’t have brought him back up again. Her feelings and memories of him were not more important than what Sarah Lynn had been through. She was supposed to be an empathetic soul who listened and nodded her head and mused about healing she didn’t know how to achieve. The free therapy friend. “About bringing BoJack up again.”
“I don’t care. His ghost can hate Ethan Around.”
“No. It’s not that. I’m sorry.”
“Talking about BoJack isn’t triggering or whatever,” Sarah Lynn’s eyes were narrowed. “My life is like a series of shitty stuff happening in really nice places, so why should I complain?”
Right when they were in the midst of comfortable banter, Diane had pulled out her Downer for Life membership card and on top of that, was making this about her feelings. And of course she didn't know how to stop. This was probably why she wasn't a real therapist.
“It’s not okay that shitty stuff happened to you,” Diane said as firmly as she could. “I could’ve prevented some of it. You guys were at my house and I didn’t- I was enabling him.” Diane swept her hair behind her ear. “I should’ve said something else- something more but I was-“
“Oh my god, stop.” Sarah Lynn sucked in a huge breath. “Nobody did the right thing. I let him stalk a teenage girl! No- I helped him stalk a teenage girl! We all suck.”
The silence returned and it was undeniably a bad one this time. Diane thought about Mr. Peanut Butter’s breathing techniques and did not attempt one. This is not about you, Nguyen.
“Let’s just ruin Ethan Around, okay?” Sarah Lynn piped up before Diane could ask what teenage girl?
Diane stared at the stains on her side of the table. Ring around, around.
“I really am. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Sarah Lynn’s voice was low, tired, but she picked up steam, returning to her flippant but weirdly eloquent party girl persona, “Give me something to do so I don’t waste away in my bathtub surrounded by black roses and tea lights like the Shakespearean tragedy I am.”
Diane raised her eyes. Not to meet Sarah Lynn’s but to hover over her shoulder.
“Watch Ethan Around with me for Girl Croosh. No one’s reviewed it yet.”
“Hell yeah. That’s a start but, you know… I was thinking bigger than that. They’re still filming the next season. What if I guest star and flip the bird the whole time and they have to give me CG hands?”
“Can your agent make that happen?”
“She’s a total goddess. So yes.”