I heard about my reunion through Facebook. I rolled there in the dead of winter to see Lisa Gehrig. They held it on the hotel rooftop in downtown Los Angeles.

Lisa greeted me at a table full of name tags. We were alone in the hallway, just me and her. Her girlish figure had blossomed into a woman’s. She was dangerously slender in a leafy gown.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“Well well well. Lisa Gehrig,” I said. “Twenty years have sure flown by, haven’t they?”

“I’m sorry, but you went to my high school?”

She’d insulted me, but I let it slide. “I did.” I held my hand out for a handshake. Her hand was like lavender soap. “Paul Talisman. I sat behind you in biology. Sophomore year.”

“Really? I’m so embarrassed. I wish I could remember.”

“You captained the cheerleader team,” I said. “You were voted class president, prom queen, homecoming queen. You ran the chess club, the key club, the ski club.”

“My God, I’m starting to blush,” she said.

“Ironically, you went to the University of San Diego to study Biology.”

“How is that ironic?” she asked.

“Because I sat behind you in biology. You already forgot. And then you went to med school.”

“How do you know?”

“Because people talk.”

I’d lived in Woodland Hills for most of my life. People gossiped.

“Remind me of your name again?” she said.

Of course she’d forgotten my name already. The popular people had too many friends. I gave her one of my business cards. I still carried those around in the age of smartphones. The title under my name said, Actor.

She wrote my name on a name tag. “OK, Paul. Stick this on your left breast. And come to me if you have any questions.”

I stuck it on my red Columbia fleece jacket. It could barely stick on polyester.

“What about you? What’s been going on for the past twenty years?” she asked.

I’d been fearing that question. I knew it would come up at the reunion. What else would they ask? “Oh, you know. Blockbusters, comedy tours, deals with cable networks.” I’d lied about everything.

She looked past me at her fellow cheerleaders behind me. She got up to hug them. They looked the same way in high school. I remembered their names, too, sadly enough.

---

When everyone showed up, they looked past me. I remembered their names and faces. It was a talent I’d acquired somewhere.

The servers and bartenders wore tuxedos. I stood by a swimming pool. The air froze my hands and ears. I warmed my hands with my breath. I stood under a heat lamp. I got lost in the voices of the alumni. The class of ’95 carried the same herd mentality as before. My name tag had fallen off somewhere. A large banner spread across the wall on the side of the hotel’s rooftop: Jefferson High School, Class of 1995. Loudspeakers blasted music from the nineties. I cried at “Tonight, Tonight.” All those years I’d wasted trying to pursue my dream of becoming a Hollywood star. It was like the years I’d wasted in high school. Had it happened, there would’ve been no lies. I hid my tears, wiping them away.

Everybody else flocked to their groups. My friends were scattered among them, not to say I had a lot.

I approached one of my close friends. Martin Chang used to drink Capri-Suns during lunch. But now he was holding a Martini. We would hang out in the cafeteria and eat soft pretzels with mustard. He used to play the violin. His mother would make him stay home at night to study and practice. All that discipline got him a ticket to Harvard.

“Martin Chang, Space Engineering.”

“Holy shit,” he said. “Paul Talisman?”

We shook hands.

“You still living in Norway?” I asked.

“How did you know?”

“Because I know everything.”

“Well, cheers, buddy.”

He held his glass out for a clink, but my glass was empty.

“I see you still wear a bandage on your nose.”

I switched subjects. “So tell me about Norway.”

People prefer to talk about themselves. I stood there. He chewed the fat about Oslo, skiing, and fantasy football. But I tuned out. I was too busy scanning the rooftop for Lisa.

“Anyway, it was awesome seeing you again,” Martin said. “Better get back to the group.”

His group was the students from GATE. They were the elite with 4.0 GPAs. They’d attended the best schools. I’d taken a comedy school in Van Nuys to study British comedy. But I kept that to myself.

I went for more whiskey. The bartender was the coolest cat at the reunion. Nick treated me special. He wasn’t like my alums. He hooked me up with top-shelf Johnny Walker.

“How you feeling, man?”

“Could be better,” I said. “And you?”

He popped a champagne bottle between his legs. He looked like a leading man in a tuxedo. He fit perfectly into his pants and jacket. What I wouldn’t have done to look like him. He still had all his hair. Time will tell if he’ll keep it.

“My twenty-year reunion isn’t here yet,” he said, “but I went to my ten-year reunion. And let me say—I got with every woman I wished I had in high school. It was one of the most memorable nights ever.”

Nick had lived my dream. I’d avoided my ten-year reunion. I thought it would be the same shit as high school. But Nick had told his story. Oh well. I was getting uglier at thirty-eight. So had the class of ’95. Crow’s feet and gray hair and double chins had grown everywhere like algae. Except for Lisa Gehrig.

Nick poured my whiskey with a complimentary glass of champagne. I tipped him ten. That cost a lot because my rent was due.

Who else approached the bar but Ben Michaels. “Well well well,” I said. “If it isn’t Ben Michaels. All-state quarterback. Scholarship at UCLA but transferred to Stanford. Majored in Economics but went into real estate.”

Michael turned to me and grinned sideways. He wore the same perm as I’d remembered. He held a lump of bills and a key fob for his Mercedes. “How did you know all of that?”

“Just a talent of mine,” I said.

“You went to Jefferson High?”

“Yep. Paul Talisman. Hollywood actor.”

“Actor, huh? I used to be a talent agent.”

I didn’t know that. If I did, I wouldn’t have told him about my acting. There were still more things to learn about my alumni.

Ben picked up an Old-Fashioned and sipped it. He kept his beady brown eyes on me. “What films have you played in?”

I’d worried about that question, too. “Independent films,” I said. “You’ve probably never heard of them.”

“I’m a film buff,” Ben said. “Try me.”

So I had to make up titles. “Red Sunglasses?”

“Hmm,” he said. “What else?”

“The Cobbler’s Mistress?”

“Wish I could say I’ve heard of it.”

“The Pillow?”

“You’re right. I’ll have to look them up,” he said.

I would probably never see him again. So it wouldn’t hurt if he looked them up.

His wife ran into his arms. She smiled. She was a tall blond. They must’ve met in college. “This is,” he said. He had to think again. “Remind me of your name?”

“Paul Talisman.”

“Right. Paul Talisman.” He laughed at my name. “He knows everything. It’s insane.”

She shook my hand but kept her name to herself. I guess I had to be important enough to know it.

Ben squeezed my shoulder. “Come on.” He seemed drunk already, and I was halfway there. “I want you to meet my friends.”

He’d said it as if they were strangers to me. The popular crowd might as well have been.

I stood among his people and played the game. I told each person what I knew and astonished them with my answers.

“You’re Peter Gonzalez. Gonzo for short. You went to juvey after that assault charge on Josh Dawkins with a flashlight. That was junior year. What’s it like working at Meineke?”

Peter seemed sad that I’d brought that up. He’d probably forgotten he’d bullied me before Principal Wible pulled him out.

“Michelle Rosa. You had your first child during your senior year. Studied at Cal State, Dominguez Hills, to become a nurse. And you’re Grant Henson. Westpoint. Now you work for the federal government.”

“What about me?” I heard. “What about me?… What about me?” The game was too simple. But it hurt me to know that everyone had forgotten me. I resented them again. The students used to avoid me because of the bandage. Martin was my only friend, except for Will. And Will stayed home. I wanted to leave at that point.

---

Martin came up to me after they’d served the New York raspberry cheesecake. Why did I go to that reunion? All I’d looked forward to seeing was Lisa Gehrig one last time before she would weather. She held hands with Ken Gehrig. He was another fat lawyer. Why are all lawyers fat? Martin slung his arm around me. He was a happy drunk. I wasn’t.

“We’re heading to a pub down the street,” he said. “You should come.”

The alums had quickly emptied out after dessert. I was piss-drunk. “I guess so.”

“You guess so? Everyone wants you to come. You’re killing them with this game.”

The night obscured away. Lisa’s name flew over the rooftop.

“It’s not a game,” I said. “I just like to know what people are doing.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Chang said. “Let’s go.”

I last remembered the silver necklace on Lisa Gehrig’s neck.

Everything blacked out at a juncture.

---

I woke up the next morning with the worst hangover in Paul Talisman’s history. A painful brick was lodged inside my head.

A shower wouldn’t cure the pain. I threw up in the toilet and checked Facebook for anything new. I would hope someone would get in touch with me with connections. Lisa Gehrig sent me a friend request. It excited me. I must’ve impressed her with my charm. Or she felt bad for forgetting me. But at least she remembered me. Needless to say, I accepted her request.

She also invited me to an alumni page where people had written about me. I assumed:

That drunk with the bandage on his nose was out of control.

They called the police.

Maggie’s OK. But those glass shards made her bleed. The dog, too.

How did a dog fit into the equation?

I’d had enough of reading the alumni page.

But the thought about Lisa lingered. I searched her profile. She lived in the Pacific Palisades with Ken and their four children. She’d posted pics of her kids in their bear costumes, dragon costumes, and alligator costumes. They looked like a gang of stuffed animals. I took a closer look at albums of her in designer gowns. Each one looked as posh as the one she’d worn at the reunion. She posed in some of them with other wealthy Caucasian wives on a staircase. They lined up like contestants for Miss America. Their backs were straight. Their jaws pointed up. Each lady wore the same real estate smile.

Ken held her in each pic in an album called Ken and I. He was a fat man with raisins for eyes. His head was out of proportion from the rest of his body. It hurt me to see her with another man. She smiled with her mouth open in each pic while he gritted his teeth. He looked like the typical vanilla alpha male. He couldn’t articulate a joke or have much to say. Lisa had posted eighty-four pics of their vacation in Barcelona. She’d called it: Our Second Vacation in Barcelona.

The farthest I’d ever traveled out of the country was Tijuana. Those were dark times. I had twenty-three dollars to my name before my next paycheck. A full-time job at the bookstore can barely keep a single man afloat. It gave me hardly any time for auditions. But I shall become a leading man in Hollywood before forty. The dream of acting in British comedies still lives. I shall speak it loudly at my thirty-year reunion.

I had to hear what happened last night after the blackout, so I messaged Martin Chang. I was anxious about what he might say.

Please tell me what I did last night.

Chang wrote me ten minutes later. They’d booted me out of the pub for being belligerent. That wasn’t my bag. I’d stuffed my mouth with tacos. I was half awake at the table. And I hugged people, even the jukebox. I sarcastically called each person my favorite person. That sounded more like me. It all seemed alright at that point.

But I’d also kissed Sammie Williamson. She was a track and field star. She went on a full ride to Colorado University. She was a Physics major who chose to be a veterinarian instead. Her husband pushed me out of the way. He told me to get out. I pushed him back. Martin said her husband went to the doorman, who weighed over three hundred pounds. I told the doorman to fuck off. He went to throw me out. I smashed a beer bottle on the floor. It exploded into shards. It gashed Maggie Rodriguez’s leg. Maggie rode in a wheelchair. She had to drop out of school because of her sick mother. And I cut up the dog. How could a man my age behave that way? It was like my teenage self had projected against them.

That wasn’t the end of it. I ran behind the bar to start making drinks. The doorman chased me. I escaped him and lay on the counter to sleep. He literally threw me out. He’d picked me up and tossed me out like a fertilizer bag. Martin said I was lucky not to end up in jail or hospital. It explained the bruises on my knees and elbows.

I told Martin I’d never felt so ashamed in my life.

We’ve all been there, he wrote.

Not to that extent. My resentment had only worsened with age. My friends in my twenties used to call me a happy drunk. I used to walk up to strangers and hug them for the sake of hugging them. I believed I would be famous someday. That chance diminished. I’d taken my anger out on my alums. Ninety percent of them I despised because of their snootiness. Martin said I’d accused them of being the same douchebags from high school. I was the talk of the night. Martin told me to take it easy on myself. I shouldn’t beat myself up.

I drank a six-pack, smoked weed, and looked at more of Lisa’s pics. She sure loved herself.

---

The hangover went away a day later. I sent her a message: Do you want to meet for coffee? The balls I had to ask a married woman. I’m still waiting for her response.