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until the stars fall from the sky
1989
missy adams doesn’t think she’s going to be famous or anything. the young woman is eighteen, an awkward goth girl with bad skin and a crooked nose, and she auditions for a part as an extra in i love you to death because she just wants to catch one glimpse of river phoenix in person. she’s never seen a boy as gorgeous as river up close, and she just wants one second of eye contact to dream about for nights on end.
as it turns out, missy gets the part! when she actually sets her eyes on river for the first time, missy falls head over heels in love. river phoenix up close is even more perfect than the goth woman had imagined. river tosses long, straight blond hair over one thin shoulder and looks in missy’s general direction, and she actually trips over one of the other extras and lands flat on her face on the pavement during filming.
missy splits her lip with the fall, and she feels ready to sink through the ground with embarrassment and pain, and then she feels a hand helping her up. she grabs hold of it and licks off some of the blood from her mouth, and that’s when she realizes she’s looking right at river phoenix, who looks almost too thin and too vulnerable this close, and who looks mesmerized! by her!
“hi, i’m river,” river says, his voice soft as a dandelion, “poor girl, that looks like it hurts. are you alright?”
missy wonders if she’s dreaming, then turns the color of her bleeding lip when she realizes she said that out loud.
1954
eartha kitt knows she’s something special. she gets plenty of letters from boys who come to her shows, and most of the notes she barely bothers to read. but she opens the one marked “james dean” in a neat but sprawling script – she just gets a feeling she should read it.
the boy who wrote the letter – james dean, apparently – writes about being an actor just starting out. “i want to move like you,” his letter says, “can you teach me how to move my body like you do on stage?”
eartha writes back, starting her letter “dear jamie,” and tells the boy when and where to meet her at ballet class. to her surprise, jamie actually shows up. he’s gorgeous – pale, blond, and thin, with these tragic eyes – and looking vulnerably over at her with his mouth open.
eartha lets her mouth twist up into a smirk. “so let’s dance, jamie. unless you’re too scared?” she purrs, then watches, enchanted, as jamie turns the most exquisite shade of red. eartha grins into the ballet barre. this is going to be fun.
until the rivers all run dry
1993 (october 31st)
missy adams has never been a very fast runner, and now the twenty two year old woman is nine months pregnant, but she’s never sprinted so fast in her life.
she pushes past the crowds of clubgoers and barges into the viper room. “RIVER?!” she spots the love of her life just as river hits the floor. she watches river crawl out through the club’s front door and collapse again on the sidewalk.
missy sprints, her pregnancy-swollen ankles aching. her adrenaline lets her catch up with river, and she whips out her clunky gray brick of a mobile phone and dials 9-1-1.
oh, god, river is going into seizures! missy cradles his head, not letting him hit the club’s wall. “h-hello, 9-1-1?” she squeaks out through sobs, holding river’s skeletal hand, “i have an emergency.”
“i’m not gonna let you die, darling,” she cries with the emergency operator still on the line. and river doesn’t die.
1955 (september 30th)
eartha was gonna go to the car race with her darling; only at the last minute did she remember she had a dance class and had to “meet up with you later, jamie baby.”
when eartha gets out of the class and comes home to no car in the driveway, she feels a pit in her stomach. when the phone rings and the other woman who answers is a somber-sounding nurse at the local hospital, she feels dizzy.
jamie hadn’t made it to the race, as it turns out. he’d gone a back way, and another car had rammed right into his. broken neck, broken pieces of the car’s windshield and windows slicing up jamie’s pretty throat, arms, torso, face, and legs. his right leg was the worst – it had come clean off, apparently.
eartha is sick with guilt. if only she’d been in the car with him. if only she’d gotten hurt instead – or too, at least. if only she’d told him not to take a shortcut.
“i’ll be right down to the hospital, honey,” she says, and her voice is uncharacteristically small.
until the sun no longer shines
1994 (july 5th)
baby skylar phoenix is newly eight months old, and he’s started crawling everywhere. mrs missy phoenix does most of the wrangling of her and river’s son, since river has only just recently been cleared by the rehab place to do normal physical activity.
now, though, the goth woman is in the kitchen, pouring glasses of dr pepper for herself and the love of her life, and she suddenly hears the telltale sounds of skylar crawling as fast as his tiny little body can take him. then, she sees river running after skylar… or trying to, at least.
clearly, river had been unaware of how fat and round he’d gotten. lovingly, missy watches from the kitchen as her husband pants after going just a few steps.
river just barely makes it to scoop up skylar, then sticks his tongue out exaggeratedly, clearly to make his wife giggle.
“i guess i’m a little bit out of shape,” river says in his characteristically gentle voice, not sounding at all like it bothers him.
affectionately, missy grabs at and wiggles one of river’s chins. she’s never been happier in her life.
1956 (june 8th)
eartha kitt dean can’t keep the smile off her face today. the newly married, nine months pregnant woman hums to herself. “you’re getting out of bed today, jamie baby!” she almost sings.
jamie grins. “aw, do i hafta?” he laughs. eartha rolls her eyes playfully. “someone’s gotta hold my hand when the nurses get this baby outta me, jamie! and the doctor said you’re strong enough now.”
lovingly, she helps to roll jamie from the bed – over months of laying in bed and eating, he’s gone from the svelte figure everyone had known james dean for to being quite fat and round.
jamie does brilliantly at standing on his new metal right leg, but eartha can also tell that her darling isn’t used to balancing on his new figure yet. stumbling, jamie whistles. “i guess i didn’t notice all this ‘cause i’m sweet on you, earthie.” eartha grins, poking at her husband’s extremely doughy middle. “jamie baby, you’re sweet all over.”
4. in other words, until the end of time
january 1994
“was it hard, being stuck in bed all that time?” river asks jamie kitt dean. river is still heroin skinny and recovering, and missy phoenix watches her beloved new husband rock baby skylar gently on one bony knee.
jamie, who is middle aged and scarred and fat, with torn vocal cords that make his voice squeaky and unrecognizable, laughs. “hard? son, my only responsibilities were lying in bed, eating a ridiculous amount of food, and sleeping with earthie. it was great.”
river, who clearly hadn’t been expecting that response, bursts out laughing.
missy still isn’t used to river having this much life back in him, and the young woman feels herself grinning.
eartha kitt dean gives her a knowing smile, and suddenly missy knows just how the other woman must have felt watching jamie walk with his prosthetic leg for the first time back in the 50s.
it’s a cold january day, but missy feels a lovely kind of warm.