Deep in the lower corners of his living room, the Regional Accounts Manager crouched, drenched in sweat. With feather duster in hand, and a mop in the other, he worked, mid-panic, frantically tidying up all evidence that someone lived in his house. He adjusted picture frames.  Wiped chair seats. Brushed the thin coat of his terrified beagle, Richard. To aid in the effort, he even bought a robotic vacuum to comb the house floors. In one hour, the Famous Actor would cooly strut through that very door, complete with a photographer, camera crew, and journalist, thus changing the course of the Regional Accounts Manager’s life forever. 

After scrubbing the living room, the Regional Accounts Manager ditched both the duster and mop to check on the pressure cooker. The glass lid lifted with a flourish of steam, and deep inside the beef bubbled thick and hot, so rich and lazily, as it had been for hours.

Should he have even cooked something? Maybe not. Definitely not. God, what was he thinking? The Famous Actor was accustomed to dining off the glitz and glamour of Hollywood.  Entrees in that world were fifty bucks a pop and the plating was laced with real gold! The Regional Accounts Manager knew so. He would openly confess to reading the occasional tabloid on the train. Still, even if the Regional Accounts Manager did order out, what could this neighborhood offer anyway that would compare? 

The Regional Accounts Manager put away his cleaning supplies thinking how Claire missed out. Oh how she loved the Famous Actor. Oh how she ogled him during late night television interviews, and dragged the Regional Accounts Manager to see all his movies. Not that The Regional Accounts Manager didn’t enjoy the man either… He did, immensely. The man had two Oscars. But the Regional Accounts Manager could not wait for Claire to open the newspaper tomorrow morning, or check social media, to see the two of them together, there, in her old house, eating off those old plates she didn’t want to take. It was good, too good, and over the sound of slow bubbling beef and the robot vacuum pitching in, the Regional Accounts Manager took a look around, smiled, and sprinted upstairs to shave and change.

Imagine his surprise when he descended the stairs and into the stench of defecation. What was this? Dog shit had been smeared in streaks, wall-to-wall, like some sick weirdo had painted with it. 

“NO! BAD RICHARD. BAD. Goddamn robot vacuum,” he stomped at Richard to run him off in shame, then kicked the poop-plow robot into the basement. “For fuck’s sake!” The Famous Actor would be there in twenty minutes.

The Regional Accounts Manager grabbed his mop and bucket from the pantry, but knew the place would inevitably reek of feces. Meanwhile, he still had to set the table, boil the corn, grab extra toilet paper from the closet, and perform last checks. He worked furiously and the sweat ruined his washed and primped hair. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror he suddenly felt self-conscious. What the hell was he doing, honestly? Working so hard to impress the Famous Actor? He didn’t have a chance. Look at this tacky Ikea bookshelf. Look at his empty home at age 41. Jesus, what did he think, the freshly washed Honda in the driveway was going to knock this guys socks off?

The Regional Accounts Manager paused to look at Richard cowering in the corner. “Ehh, boy. Sorry. I know I’m making you nervous.”

Richard wagged his tail and stepped forward.

In the basement, the robot vacuum erroneously beeped a sad warning. 

“Not you- you shut the hell up!”

Feces cleaned, toilet paper grabbed, corn boiling, table set, Richard poured himself a cold beer and waited. If you asked him what he had thought about during those remaining few minutes, he would say he lost time. It was a blur. It maybe never even existed. He was that nervous. 

At five past seven, however, the doorbell rang. The Regional Accounts Manager was startled, as was Richard, who began barking. The Regional Accounts Manager checked his tie and collar, smoothed his now sweaty tangle of hair, took one last measured breath, and opened the door. There stood the Famous Actor with a film crew behind him. The promotional people warned that there would be several people at the beginning meet and greet, but the effect of the Famous Actor’s trademark smile and the lights and many bodies overwhelmed him nonetheless. When the Famous Actor said the Regional Accounts Manager’s name, he almost fainted. 

“Well, can I come in?!” and the Famous Actor clapped the Regional Accounts Manager on the shoulder. 

“Cut!” the Promotional Director yelled. “Perfect! Now if we could just get a picture of you both holding a DinoCrunch Bar. Take this. Good. Hold there. Great. Maybe shake hands. Perfect. Okay, but turn the wrapper so we can see it. Fantastic work.”

“Of course it’s fantastic, look at my costar,” the Famous Actor said, pointing to the Regional Accounts Manager. “Hey, maybe this guy should be the actor!”

Everyone laughed, including the Regional Accounts Manager and the Famous Actor.

“Great,” the Promotional Director said, “Call us when you two are done! Have fun!”

Then the Local Entertainment Journalist butt in, “Hey if I could snap a shot of you two as well, this’ll be tomorrow’s headline!”

“Of course!” The Famous Actor put his arm around the Regional Accounts Manager to draw him close. “Need a quote too?”

“Definitely,” the Local Entertainment Journalist replied.

“I’m so happy to be in Canton, Ohio, not just for the movie’s nationwide press tour but also for this beautiful heartland our country has to offer. And heck, I figured, why not get in touch with the real folks that make America so fantastic, those real fans I couldn’t do this without.”

“Perfect!” The Local Entertainment Journalist said with a massive smile. Then he addressed the Regional Accounts Manager. “How about you? Got a quote?”

“Uhhh, I-I-I’m a huge fan. Can’t believe he’s here in front of me.”

The Entertainment Journalist nodded as if there should be more, but there wasn’t, so he just sighed while raising his eyebrows. “I might be in touch tomorrow.” And then he walked away.

“Fantastic! Thanks, boss,” the Famous Actor shouted after him. “Now let’s get inside and get to know each other!”

The Regional Accounts Manager watched with slight dread as the entire crowd thinned out, leaving the two of them alone. He motioned the Famous Actor inside, who wiped his feet on the doormat, then he closed the door with a hard swallow in his throat. 

“Whew, smells interesting.” The Famous Actor said. 

“Sorry that was my dog. He got nervous.”

“Dog! I love dogs. Hey boy! Hey buddy! What’s his name?”

“Richard.”

“Love it! Come here, Richard. Good Richard. That’s a good boy, Richard. King Richard! Played him once in an HBO thing.”

“I saw that!”

“Hey Richard, good boy. So, wait, what did you think of my performance? I thought it was terrible. So did the internet. Couldn’t get the dialect right. Also the director was a notorious hack…”

“What, I loved it!” but the Regional Accounts Manager did not. 

“Really?” The Famous Actor stared at him. “It was panned everywhere. You liked it? Even the weird dance number in the middle?”

“Well, yeah, that maybe didn’t fit at all.”

The Famous Actor’s face sank.

“B-but you were great.”

“Aw, thanks boss, I do appreciate that! So, what do we got for booze? Aww Richard. What a sweetie. Man, I’d love to have a dog. Used to have one, but the ex-wife took him. Thought I’d get another, but I always felt too guilty traveling all the time and being so busy.”

“I have scotch and beer,” Richard said, though he was thinking of the Famous Actor’s equally famous ex-wife who took said dog. When the promotional people called the Regional Accounts Manager at work to tell him he had won the DinoCrunch Sweepstakes, his male coworkers ragged on him, asking the Regional Accounts Manager to ask the Famous Actor about that woman’s rumored private piercings.

“I’ll take a scotch please. Easier on the gut. I need to be thin if I want to keep outrunning CGI dinosaurs.”

The Regional Accounts Manager laughed. “Scotch it is.”

“So, what do you for a living, boss?”

“I’m a Regional Accounts Manager for Canton Bank and Trust.” 

“Sounds important! A real man’s job like my brother’s. Holy hell, is this a picture of your friends?!”

The Regional Accounts Manager popped his head back in to see the Famous Actor looking at the pictures on his wall. “Oh yes, at Yosemite.”

“God, look at how many of you. You all hang out like this?”

“Not all together like that except maybe at parties and events and stuff, but yeah, we break off into groups and meet up often.”

“Good for you guys…”

The Regional Accounts Manager grew perplexed at the sudden tone, “But you must hang out with your old friends and go to crazy exotic locations. I haven’t left the country in eight years.”

“Not really,” the Famous Actor answered. “The guys from high school find things too strange now, I think. College years were a blur. I kept in touch with a few roommates, but not like you folks, hoo boy…”

“What about the pictures of you and Henry Ackerman or Greg Clancy?”

“Those guys are great, but actor friends aren’t too accessible. Being famous is the only thing that ties us together, which is ludicrous when you think about it.”

“I guess…” 

The Regional Accounts Manager passed the glass of scotch to the Famous Actor, surprised they had reach such candid depths of conversation. He didn’t know what else he expected in all of this. Maybe to give him a tour of his home, take a selfie, eat, ask for an autograph, and be finished. Now he realized all of that would’ve consumed about twenty minutes. He should’ve prepared talking points.

“Who’s this gal?” The Famous Actor asked, pointing to a framed shot of Claire. 

“Ex-girlfriend.” And the Regional Accounts Manager returned to the kitchen to turn off the pressure cooker.

“Ah, got plenty of those…”

“I know,” the Regional Accounts Manager said, more flippantly than expected. He mentally swore at himself for the gaffe. All the online tips for meeting a famous person said not to acknowledge gossip.

“Yeah, who doesn’t, right?” The Famous Actor scoffed, then he followed the Regional Accounts Manager into the kitchen. “Holy shit, did you cook?”

“I-I did.”

“Oh man.”

“That okay? I checked with the promo people to make sure you ate beef.”

“Of course. I, uh, this is embarrassing, I just haven’t had a home-cooked meal in ages. Not since I was home to see family in Illinois.”

“Well,” and the Regional Accounts Manager straightened up. “You are most welcome to tonight.”

So, the two gentleman sat down at the table with Richard underfoot hoping for scraps. They talked about basic things at first- sports, music, politics, their families. They laughed. They drank more scotch. There were times when the Regional Accounts Manager would look up and be momentarily frozen that this particular man was in front of him, like he had crawled out of the television screen to eat his corn, from his corn-holders, inside his home.

The famous actor said things like, “I never cheated on Emily Avery. Stop smiling, I swear! She was the first gal I hadn’t with, and she’s a complete monster by the way. Don’t let the ‘oopsie me, I don’t know how to be famous yet’ interviews fool you. She’s an absolute rich degenerate. Racist, arrogant, vain, the works. Yet I never cheated on her! Never even kissed another woman while we dated. After that happens, and you get with someone great, you say to yourself, ‘I never cheated on that demon of a woman, so this excellent gal should be a breeze’, and it is. And you won’t cheat again. But hell, you still might mess things up.”

Yet the Regional Accounts Manager said things like, “Well, you need to mortgage appropriately. People have it in their minds that the whole process is intimidating, but I say ‘if a lot of people do something, it can’t be that hard.’ Taxes, buying a car, stocks. Yes, the possibility exists that you may fail, but hell, people do these actions everyday, people who are dumber than rocks and yet who do it right. It just takes preparation. It takes time, willingness, and planning, not a PhD.”

More scotch flowed. The meal was eaten. Increasingly the Regional Accounts Manager dropped his guard, while it was possible the Famous Actor never raised his to begin with.

“I gotta say, this beef is incredible,” the Famous Actor moaned. “And the corn? Gaw damn, I do appreciate solid home-cooking.”

“Is it as good as DinoCrunch Protein Bars?” the Regional Accounts Manager joked. “Do you even eat those? Be honest.” 

The Famous Actor scoffed. “Do you?”

“How do you think I won the contest? Buying up all the packages like some obsessive murderer?”

“Honestly, if you are one, just do it already,” the Famous Actor joked, taking his next bite. “Mmmm, look, my most famous franchise involves killer dinosaurs. If there’s a protein bar, or breakfast cereal, or soda, or whatever the hell it is, that involves a T.Rex or a what is it, a stegosaurtops, and it’s being sold around the premiere date, they’re going to pay me a lot of money to do this kind of crap.”

For some reason, and despite the Regional Accounts Manager’s prior assumptions that this dinner was the furthest thing from what the Famous Actor would rather be doing given his time, this “crap” word choice hurt. 

The Famous Actor, trained on recognizing and mimicking emotion, recognized so, coughed, and saluted the Regional Accounts Manager with his glass, saying, “Thank god you’re one of the cool ones, though. This is going swimmingly. I’m serious about the meal, too.”

The Regional Accounts Manager accepted the cheers as being sincere, but deep within felt a sense of shame. He recognized exactly what the Famous Actor was doing, using charm and phoniness that comes standard in L.A.. The man was a professional liar, after all, an expert at pretending to feel and embodying other people.

The Regional Accounts Manager felt dizzy and uncomfortable by this. Still, seeing the Famous Actor seated across the table like this, picking corn from his teeth, and gently gracing the pimple above his right eyebrow, the Regional Accounts Manager felt ashamed. This was a person regardless. It was a human being.

“Do you enjoy being famous?” the Regional Accounts Manager said, quite abruptly, while reaching for a dinner roll.

The Famous Actor ceased his chewing for a moment, then swallowed the huge masticated wad. “It’s been years since someone asked me that…”

The Regional Accounts Manager did not respond. He was still shocked that the question had flown out of his mouth.

  “Really, nobody poses these kinds of questions to me except my therapist. In a way, fame is all I’ve known for 18 years. It’s who I am. I used to be undefined, same as anyone else. I was wandering and grasping, the type of someone who was themselves and not the sum of their assumptions, or work, or gossip and ratings. Let me ask you this, do you know the difference between being famous and being talented? Because I used to, but I don’t anymore. Do I get awarded parts because I’m talented, or because people recognize me? How ironic is that, when everyday I have to wear clothes so people DON’T recognize me. I have to think twice about attending my nephew’s baseball games. I have to turn down wedding invites- if I even receive them- as to not upstage the couple. I can’t step into any business outside of Los Angeles without being asked something. My friends have phased themselves out. Every woman I date is questioned for her ability to love me or her idea of me, not to mention her love of my money. Strangers know me more than I know them. I haven’t worked, really strove, for a goddamn thing in years. So I’m wealthy, yes, but what for? What could I possibly spend my money on that isn’t already handed to me? So I get out of jury duty. Cool. Or my tweet gets a million likes. Great. Or I can go to Hawaii, tomorrow, indefinitely, because why the fuck not? But also, why the fuck? Lately, I’ve been running out of ‘why-the-fuck-nots,’ does that make sense? Do you know what that’s like to run out of spontaneity? Do you know what that takes, when money, materialism, power, and accolades no longer mean anything? When the same drive that compels ninety-nine-point-eight percent of the world returns nothing for you personally?”

“I don’t,” the Regional Accounts Manager admitted.

“Tell me, do you have a loved one you adore any less because they are not famous? Conversely, is there someone in your life, maybe now dead, that you love unconditionally despite them not winning 8 Oscars? Now can you list me five actors from, say, the 1930s? Hell, kids today don’t know who John Belushi is. Fame dies, same as man. In a hundred years, they won’t remember me. With today’s content saturation of Netflix, satellite TV, the Internet, humanity will maybe, MAYBE, remember Tom Hanks.  So yes, I have a respected legacy, but I see more of that aspect in having a child than making the sequel to Dino Sword. I see the same security in my brother and his kids. He’s not famous, but he might as well be to his four-year-old. So, then, the better question is, was achieving fame worth it? For this fleeting state, whatever it is, whatever this all means- was it worthwhile?”

There was silence.

“…well, was it?” the Regional Accounts Manager asked

“Fucking of course not! Any celebrity who answers yes has lost their most basic modicum of humility. They are delusional enough to think that wealth and adoration from a portion of the population does not cause more problems than it solves. Because now I have a question for you. Based off what you’ve seen of me, of my personality and character, would you want to have dinner with me if I were some regular guy?”

“I would.”

“I don’t think that’s true. Even if it were true, the strength and self-confidence it requires for someone famous to recognize that you would, in fact, want to share dinner with some random guy, is comprehensible only to idiots who have no real grasp of normalcy. And I assure you, I am no idiot.”

“Neither am I,” the Regional Accounts Manager said. 

“No, you are not.”

A lapse settled onto their conversation. The Regional Accounts Manager recognized that the Famous Actor had crossed a social line which could not be returned from. The sudden and mutual awareness that they had both drank too much soured the mood.

The Famous Actor rubbed his forehead, gracing his pimple again, and in complete deflection muttered, “Dinner has been excellent tonight.”

The Regional Accounts Manager nodded, surrendering. The only sound now came from Richard below their feet, scratching his ear with his hind-leg and jingling the tags of his collar.

“I, uhh, didn’t think to prepare a desert…” the Regional Accounts Manager said. “That was stupid.”

“You’ve done more than enough. I’ll give the promo people a call to come pick me up, they had a driver on standby in case you were psycho or boring.”

“Hopefully I wasn’t either one.”

“Not a chance,” the Famous Actor chuckled and winked.

“May I take your plate?” the Regional Accounts Manager said, scooping up both empty plates and accompanying utensils.

“Please, let me help.” The Famous Actor leapt to a stagger, grabbed the leftover salad, bottle of dressing, and corn holders, then followed, clattering into the kitchen.

“You can leave that stuff by the stove,” the Regional Accounts Manager pointed, self-conscious of his slurring.

“I’d like to do the dishes though…” the Famous Actor said.

The Regional Accounts Manager laughed. “God no, I’ll get to ‘em in the morning.”

“Please. We have- had a saying in my family. ‘Cooks don’t clean.’ My dad would shout it to my mom and aunt, and later on, my brother and I during barbecues. ‘Cooks don’t clean!’ It’s a personal philosophy.”

“Ha! Well, Richard will get to ‘em later. His tongue is better than a scrub brush, believe me.”

“I’m serious,” the Famous Actor said, and he rolled up his sleeves. “Got dish liquid?”

“Oh, stop with that,” the Regional Accounts Manager said. “Relax. You’re not working right now.”

“I know that. The camera’s are gone. Is this your only sponge?”

“Stop, please. Go to bed. Call your driver.” The Regional Accounts Manager laughed as he tried to squeeze in the way of the sink, but the Famous Actor blocked him.

“It’s the least I could do. Please.”

“It’s fine. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Cooks don’t clean.”

“So you’ve said, but-”

“JUST LET ME FUCKING DO THE DISHES!”  

And the Famous Actor started to sob.