Cutback

iii

Denver, present day

My whole life I've hated horror films. Errol loved them though. He'd seen them all with his dad and told me I just hadn't seen the right ones. So he made me watch them with him.

He used to get like that sometimes. If I hadn't seen or heard of something he thought was great, he would compulsively stop what he was doing and show it to me on YouTube or something to prove I'd like it too—which is a sweet impulse that I typically found annoying. (Hey, Errol, I still don't like Curb Your Enthusiasm.)

Together, we watched Friday the 13th and The Shining on the small, rigid loveseat that somehow passes for comfort on this continent. The whole time Errol would laugh and eat snacks while I picked at my skin and tried not to throw up. I'd always have to shut my eyes at the end and he would throw a pillow at me. Or I'd get drunk and pretend to pass out until I really did.

"You're useless," he'd tell me while I crept off to bed while he fired up another movie at one in the morning.

When he texted that he had booked his first film less than a year after we got back, I wasn't too shocked. Errol has the most beautiful face in the world and he's funny and adventurous and his mind is like a crackling live wire that used to startle me with its intensity. He could command a room because his words always came out as perfectly as his smile. When one person has that many gifts, it probably makes sense to just cash in.

The film was perfect for him: a small role in one of those remakes of '70s horror classics they put out around Halloween every now and then. Errol had been auditioning for years, since before we went to Europe, and had pretty rotten luck given his looks and the fact that he can read words longer than two syllables, which is more than you can say about most actors these days. So in a way, it made sense that he got his start in a genre he'd idolized for years.

Errol had already seen every horror classic ever made, and used to throw around names like Carpenter, Craven and De Palma as if they would register anything more than the faintest glimmer of recognition from me. I'm sure he studied for the audition like it was a big test, which of course it was. He got the part because he knew the part, and I bet he blew every other actor out of the water.

Against my better judgement, I went to the theater to see it the day it came out. There is nothing on earth worse than a movie with a jump scare so I covered my eyes every time it went quiet and imagined him sitting next to me pretending to look for a pillow to throw. But I made myself watch every second he was on screen, even when he lost his arms to a chainsaw during a thunderstorm. He was as magnetic and loose on camera as I knew he would be. Of course all I saw was my friend Errol, but he didn't talk like himself or walk the same either. He was working the screen the way I'd seen him work rooms before. The way I'd seen him work teachers and girls before. The way I'd seen him work me before.

After the movie, my heart felt like it had gotten squeezed and I couldn't talk out loud for hours. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. I broke down and texted Errol on what was probably the busiest day of his life and told him I loved it and I thought he was great and that it was so exciting. Two hours later he texted me back and asked if I closed my eyes at all.

"Well I had to," I told him.

"Useless," he replied.