Looking back, it was silly. How easily she squandered her one chance at Hollywood. For everyone knows you only get one chance. It’s simply the unspoken law of the universe. So if you throw away that chance, it’s never going to materialize again. But Ava (who had been named in honor of Ava Gardner) couldn’t understand that until it was already too late. After she had let it slip away for an instant of ephemeral pleasure. In truth, you might have called the chance she so recklessly blew her second one. For she had already been in Los Angeles once before, three years ago.

After this three-year period of self-imposed exile, a “studio” invited her to come out for a meeting (on her own dime, of course). Except it was more of a middling production company that no one had ever heard of. Even so, it was the only time anyone had ever expressed an interest in the script she had prided herself on: The Gardner Files. It was a hyper-dramatized version of Ava Gardner’s various affairs, including an imagined one with Ernest Hemingway (the two were close, but probably not that close). Being named Ava herself, she felt, was what cinched the deal for them. Gave her the reputability they were looking for—which just goes to show how little of a reputation one needs to be “considered” in Hollywood. It’s only after you become famous that your reputation (vaguely) matters. And even then, you can get away with so much for so long before anyone calls you out (see: Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Diddy, etc., etc.).

Alas, Ava would never have to worry about that now. Being famous, that is. Because she had been cavalier about her meeting. Thought she was hot shit and that they would simply reschedule it. Instead, the male head (naturally) of the company took her last-minute cancellation as a sign that she wasn’t a serious person. But I am! I am! she wanted to scream. It was just that she had been away from Los Angeles for so long that she went a little cuckoo over seeing it again. Let its shining bright lights and other assorted lures distract her from the fact that she had a very early meeting the following morning. But, in choosing to stay with Lamont (whose current drag name was Cady Heroin), she had sealed her doom. Because no one loved to party more than Lamont. If she had been less cheap, she might have opted to splurge on a hotel instead, so as to assure her professionalism the next day.

Sadly, she had already spent any extra cash she had on the airfare to get from her parents’ house in Grand Rapids to Los Angeles. And yes, part of her didn’t even want to tell them where she was going, wanted to just slip out without saying a word. She knew they would judge her too harshly, tell her she was still harboring a foolish pipe dream that was only going to be her undoing. It was better if she just accepted it now, rather than continue to delay the inevitable: that she was going to end up staying in Grand Rapids, forever a nobody.

But there’s interest in the script, she told them. Leaving out the part that it was just a meeting to discuss the potential of potentially working together—and even then, likely just as a scab writing anonymously for other people. Even so, you have to start somewhere, right? Surely this was better than the mail room. So Ava jumped at the chance. She wasn’t going to let her parents’ negativity stop her. After all, this had been their fault in the first place for naming her after an Old Hollywood movie star. What did they expect? That she wouldn’t flock to the town as soon as she could? Her first attempt at “making it there” had been five years ago, at which time she stayed for two years. It was then that she met Lamont while working as a drink maker at the aptly titled Coffee Juice Smoothie Bar next door to Hamburger Mary’s, where Lamont performed every week. Although he didn’t find the offerings at Coffee Juice Smoothie Bar to be very good (and knew he could have gone somewhere “bougier” like Earthbar for his hangover cures), he told Ava that the drinks had “slapped much harder” ever since she started working there.

It didn’t take long for Ava to imbibe her own hangover cures made at Coffee Juice Smoothie Bar once Lamont began to regularly tempt her to partake of his “WeHo nights.” It was all she could do to keep up with him while remaining semi-functional at her paid job and finding time to write during her increasingly less frequent off hours. Yet she managed, eventually, to finish The Gardner Files—it just happened to coincide with her mind “finishing” as well. For, like many who burn the candle at both ends upon moving to the big city, Ava found herself in the throes of a mental breakdown. And, regrettably, Lamont—the only person she counted as a real friend in that town—couldn’t be bothered to be there for her. Once she started getting too “messy” (especially when drunk), he began to recoil from her. As, perhaps, is the gay man’s way (unless, of course, they stick around briefly to film the embarrassment in question before departing—which Lamont was well-known for doing to Ava). And that was part of the reason Ava started to concern herself less about being in L.A. It seemed like no one really cared if she was there or not, least of all the film studios or even independent production companies that might help make her dream of becoming a screenwriter come true.

One morning, at a particular nadir, she woke up on the floor of her “efficiency” apartment in a dried-up mound of her own vomit, her computer overturned nearby with its “backside” facing her. Her worst fear was confirmed when she angled it toward her so that she could check the screen. It was presently riddled with cracks so profound that writing anything on it would result in seeing the words in a manner far too distorted to effectively focus on what was actually being said. To confirm as much, she pulled up The Gardner Files to try to read it. It was like being in a more-nightmarish-than-usual funhouse. She must have done this on purpose—destroyed her computer. In her drunken stupor, she forgot she wasn’t rich enough to take her rage out in such a careless fashion. And now her sober self was paying the price. Having an epiphany. The big, bad city was turning her cynical. Worse still, aging her prematurely. That was the morning she decided to go back to Grand Rapids for a while.

“A while” that had turned into three years. In that time, she had gotten a job at the grocery store—something menial enough to give her the focus she wanted to keep polishing The Gardner Files. Never giving up on it no matter how many crickets she heard in response. Until the two-bit head of production at Domingo LLC reached out to her. A quick bit of research pinpointed the “company” to be based in San Fernando Valley, an automatic red flag. No matter, someone wanted to “take a meeting” with her, and she was ready to do whatever was necessary to make her grand reentry into Los Angeles. She had been crazy to ever leave. And now that it wanted her back, she would never let go of it again.

Of course, to celebrate a “homecoming” that was still really just a visit (complete with a return to ticket to the Gerald R. Ford Airport), Ava allowed herself to get far too carried away. Or, more accurately, Lamont allowed her to get far too carried away. He was eager to party that night before her would-be meeting, and elated that her arrival coincided with his desire to drown his sorrows in as much coke and alcohol as possible (and maybe an eight ball for good measure) after a bad breakup with one of the fellow drag queens at Hamburger Mary’s. Blowing an umpteenth rail (better than blowing an umpteenth chance), Lamont bemoaned, “It’s true what they say, Ave—don’t shit where you eat.” While she was heartened that he still called her the one-syllable version of her name, she couldn’t help but notice that he had an even greater darkness to his spirit than the last time she saw him. Leading her to wonder if maybe she had made the right decision by leaving.

It was possibly the creep-in of this thought that made her take the meeting less seriously, made her doubt her intention to return to L.A. Therefore, made her go along for the mind-altering ride that night. She was still up at five a.m., convinced she could just keep staying up through the morning and then head to the meeting with nothing more than a few cups of coffee as fortification. Unfortunately, she had no control over her body as it proceeded to slump over onto Lamont’s shoulder while they watched the first season of Insecure.

Before she knew it, she woke up to find it was 9:45. She knew there was no point in trying to rush to San Fernando Valley from West Hollywood now. So she called Rodrigo Domingo (hence, Domingo LLC) to ask if they could push the meeting back to the afternoon. His reaction was entirely fury-based as he proceeded to bitch her out about how important people’s time was in “this town” and who did she think she was trying to “reschedule”? Did she have some big-time actor parent he wasn’t aware of, because, otherwise, he wasn’t going to make any exceptions for some non-nepo baby.

Though the exchange only lasted all of fifty seconds, it left Ava in tears by the end. She had blown the technically second chance that Fate had dealt her (even if she had never been given a proper first one while actually living in L.A.). Meanwhile, Lamont continued to sleep as deeply as one of the corpses in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. That’s when she realized, he was dead. The cherry on top of her grand return.