Look - Zan Romanoff Page 0,75
She looks past Lulu, into space. “Some days it can be a little much,” she says. “Some days—but then, it used to bother me more when I was younger. Now if I’m not on set, no one looks at me at all. I’m too old for that.” Her gaze shifts back to Lulu, frank and certain. “So no. I don’t think about stopping. At least not for that reason. I could do without the hours. And some of these directors—well, you know how it is. This town.”
Lulu relaxes into the familiarity of her mother’s monologue on how disgusting the men are in Hollywood. She’s heard it all her life, and she’s always thought of it as a brag: her mom’s way of reminding everyone that she’s still hot enough to get hit on every time she goes to work.
Tonight, though, for the first time, she can hear the nerves in her mother’s voice as she delivers it. This apartment, this dinner, all the things she can give Lulu, which she worries aren’t enough—they all depend on money, which depends on those men still wanting to look at her.
FLASH POST BY CLAIRE SAWYER, JANUARY 4, 11:00 A.M.
“So like . . . can we talk about Lulu Shapiro, you guys? Is she trying to make some kind of move to be an actual model or something? I didn’t think the lesbian thing in the fall was a stunt—I have friends who go to school with her and they said she didn’t, like, talk about it, so it seemed like maybe it really was a mistake. But now Ryan Riggs is posting all of these pictures of her on his Flash, and there’s rumors that there’s another picture of her kissing a girl in his show, and it’s juuuuust a little sketchy if you ask me.”
FLASH PHOTO POST BY FIONA VERACRUZ, JANUARY 4, 12:27 P.M.
[Photograph of Lulu in her bathing suit from Ryan’s show]
Fuuuuck why is lulululu always so #goals
FLASH VIDEO POST BY JULIET HILLIER, JANUARY 4, 2:13 A.M.
“I guess I had to be drunk to talk about this, but I just wanted to say fuck the way Lulu Shapiro uses her sexuality for attention. Okay great. Bye!!!!!”
FLASH PHOTO POST BY BRENDAN POWELL, JANUARY 4, 4:44 P.M.
[Photograph of a shirtless teenage boy, flexing in the mirror]
Lulululu listen if you still like dudes you know where to slide
THREE IDENTICAL POSTS FROM TAE YOUNG KIM, ASHLEY GUINESS, AND MOLLY KETCHUM
[A selfie of each girl, standing against a neutral background, with the text #DEFENDLULU posted over their eyes and mouths.]
DIRECT MESSAGE FROM SIERRA CARPENTER TO LULU SHAPIRO, JANUARY 4, 10:49 P.M.
Heyyyyyy sorry if this is weird because we don’t know each other but I just wanted to say I’ve always thought you were hot and if you’re not dating that girl from the pictures maybe, like, let me know?
DIRECT MESSAGE FROM JAMES BRONSON TO LULU SHAPIRO, JANUARY 4, 10:44 A.M.
Keep posting those pix
DIRECT MESSAGE FROM FRANK WALKER TO LULU SHAPIRO, JANUARY 4, 11:03 P.M.
[Explicit photograph]
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
LULU DRAGS HER corpse out of bed on the last day of break in order to go to Sephora. She doesn’t need anything—she doesn’t even want anything. But after days of lying around, she’s actually starting to feel kind of antsy, and the mall seems like a place she can just, like, go, without needing a companion, or more of a reason than I want to try on lipstick.
Century City is nightmarishly busy, and it takes her so long to park that she thinks about just leaving, but then a spot opens up, and the inertia of already being there—of not wanting to have to go home again, or anywhere, really—tugs her into it.
The only nice thing about the crowds is that the salespeople in the store are too busy to bother her while Lulu swipes a thick fingerful of La Mer from one of the sample jars she normally doesn’t touch—all those germs. She taps on Tom Ford bronzer to give her the glow her mom was looking for, and makes her eyelashes thick and full with Dior mascara. Lulu builds her face into something pretty and expensive in a series of tiny, hot-lit mirrors.
She expected some sort of hunger to come over her once she was here—usually she loves to shop—but there’s no magic in the bottles and brushes today: just her sad face and its bright mask. Lulu rubs it all off again before she leaves the store.
She heads upstairs to the food court to get a snack