The release of Alpha lifted my profile, and now a media outfit wanted to interview me, and get a word from Jen as well. So, while I was home, Jen and I went into the arts district of the city, not far from the café where we’d met Farris, and visited the studio where the interview would be held.

It was a little smaller than the modeling studio, but contained a similar set-up.

I sat in a fold-out chair while my face was hit with a burst of light as the aide angled one of the standing softboxes. The back of the chair stretched up like a monument behind my head. Possibly a deliberate prop: empty air filling the chair above me, and lack of presence, was more eye-catching than if a famous celebrity was sitting in it.

There was a blue screen Cyclorama behind us, and a man in headphones had a boom mike telescoping overhead like a black crane arm. Behind him, the camera operator and aide were readying their equipment; of two cameras, obvious which one was trained on me; it was angled downwards on its stand. Suddenly the white bulb point of a Q-tip was bulging and bobbing into my direct perception as a make-up girl and all-round ‘toucher-upperer’ crouched over me, lathering over my face with a light application of cool cream while having to lean in so close that my head was made the target for concentrated streams of warm air from her nostrils. I was still, playing as a living sculpture as much as possible, a tiny doll whose facial features were being painted on; at this point in my career I was used to having my face was used as a tiny canvas for a make-up person’s artistic sketching.

Seated in the opposite chair, the journalist interviewer, who said her name so fast that I didn’t catch it properly, her skin lit up angelically by exposure from the other softbox, fresh-faced, but not industry-naïve. Her chair was pulled closer to mine than usual, due to my size creating an illusion of distance to her, and the camerapeople seemed keen to get us both in the frame, for the size comparison.

The female interviewer crossed her legs so that one businesslike black heel rose into my eye level, and twirled in mid-air as the foot rotated.

The make-up artist gave her face one last touch up before one of the camerapeople gave a signal for the surrounding chatter to mute and the crew and technicians to settle down.

Farris had referred a publicist for me to schedule my modeling shoot, and the same publicist had fielded the interview team’s request and reviewed the list of questions they intended to cover.

The female interviewer scrunched her brow as she made a last second survey of a clipboard. She beckoned over a harried-looking assistant, handed him the clipboard and he hurried out of the frame before the cameras began rolling.

“OVER TO YOU, JERRY,” the woman turned her head to face me and leaned in, her hands crossed over her lap. “WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO ACTING?”

She spoke in clear, polished sentences . This wasn’t a shy, coy or fawning interview and was keen to dive right into size-related matters, straight off the bat.

I straightened my spine and turned my head up to meet her eyes. Her leg was still crossed and foot hovering off to my side, performing slow loops in the air, level with my head, but I kept my gaze locked on her face. 

“The production for Alpha asked me to play a dog and I said yes.”

Some of the people behind the cameras guffawed quietly.

“I like roles that explore life at my size, what it’s like to be me, how it feels at this size. Films that get the audience to think this could actually happen to them, and think about what they’d do if it did...” Then I blurted, “That I’m real, not a special effect – or just a spectacle!”

The questions rolled through my biography: upbringing, family, schooling. Then the interview moved to the miniaturization.

The female interviewer’s lips pursed, drilling me with a level stare.

“LET’S PRETEND THE SHRINKING DIDN’T HAPPEN. WHERE WOULD JERRY MOUSSEAU BE RIGHT NOW?”

My thoughts reeled back to pre-GPR days. I huffed, so quietly no one could have heard it. Jen shifted, clamping her thighs together, squeezing a hand on her knee. Something inside me twanged unpleasantly.

“After the party,” I began, “I had planned to make a clean break. Move away. New job. Basically get myself a whole new life.” New girlfriend, a tiny voice in my brain added, but by now my lips had clamped shut.

“BUT INSTEAD A NEW LIFE FOUND YOU.”

“Heh. You could say that.”

I coughed but it didn’t alleviate the irritation in my throat. My eyes got stuck on the interviewer’s heel, completing a slow whirl clockwise, then clounter-clockwise. I wrenched my gaze away, to meet her eyes, now narrowing in a way suggesting another serious question.

"GIVEN YOUR ACTING SUCCESS FOLLOWING YOUR MINIATURIZATION, WOULD YOU WANT TO REVERT TO YOUR PREVIOUS HEIGHT IF IT MEANT RECEDING BACK INTO OBSCURITY?"

"Guess I'd just have to get a normal job. I’d make the trade-off."

"ACTING IS NOT A NORMAL JOB? TELL ME ABOUT THAT."

"I think my co-stars would agree. I miss the daily routine; that's one thing. There’s a lot of scrutiny.”

“PRESSURIZING FOR ANY ACTOR, BUT FOR YOU IT MUST BE LIKE GIANTS WATCHING YOU. DON’T YOU FEEL LIKE A ZOO ANIMAL?”

I laughed, which turned into a cough. Yes, some levity, please, the tiny voice whined. It’s a press cover, not the therapist’s chair.

“Guess that’s why I became a performer. I must like it or something.”

“YES…” she rejoindered with a suggestive tone, “…THE ATTENTION CAN’T BE ALL BAD…”

Her foot was now bobbing and angling with excitation. The shoe’s toe was unconsciously pointed at my head, its steady rotations drawing an invisible circle around me.

“HAVE YOU EVER GOTTEN A CRUSH ON ANOTHER CAST MEMBER?”

Jen had gone very still as if the question had been directed at her and she was pondering an answer.

“Yes,” I said.

Then ran my hand down the nape of my neck. My face was clammy with sweat but the outside warmth was being efficiently swept through the ceiling ductwork and pumping out the fans droning on the rooftop. Those whirring rotor blades seemed to be rumbling loud in my ears.

Then I realized the interviewer was staring at me expectantly, waiting for elaboration.

“But I won’t say which one.”

“CAN YOU SEE YOURSELF SETTLING DOWN AFTER ACTING?”

I shifted in the seat, swallowing. I coughed again. One cough turned into three, and my throat was still raw.

The cameras cut while an assistant brought me a bottle of water, tipping up the lid and handing it to me. I guzzled it as Jen draped her arm over my chair and the faintly mirrory surfaces of her polished nails brushed against the side of my head.

Then the female interviewer repeated the question.

I answered:

“I don’t think very far into the future. Acting is my world right now.”

"WILL WE SEE A MOUSSEAU JUNIOR ANYTIME ON THE HORIZON?"

How ‘Junior’ would a ‘Mousseau Junior’ be? I wondered. A baby proportionate to my size would be as big as a normal-size thumbnail. The sheer thought made me queasy with worry. My heart banged around in my ribcage like an animal trying to escape confinement, and – with a chill flash – I realized the beats weren’t coming regularly.

After a micro pause, I emphasized:

“Uhhh…see my answer to the previous question.”

The crew tittered, and then the interviewer’s attention turned to Jennifer, introducing her as my other half.

The cameras paused while a crew member skipped forward and plucked me up off my seat, placing me in Jen’s lap. Without looking down, her hand swept over her lap and met me by instinct, and the fingers narrowed in, allowing the bumps and bulk of my form to contour the insides of her curled fingers comfortably. Her pointer finger lifted to stroke my head, and as it daubed across my forehead, it paused, as if alerting to the copious perspiration flecking my face. But as she became distracted by the next question, the finger lifted away from my brow and decided to just rest its firm weight on top of my skull.

“THAT LITTLE REVELATION IS BOUND TO BREAK SOME HEARTS,” the interviewer remarked. “HOW’S IT FEEL TO BE ENGAGED TO JERRY MOUSSEAU, THE WORLD’S SMALLEST MAN?”

Now my torso was being absent-mindedly massaged. As she considered her response, my ribcage was squeezed and flexed in a curious and explorative way – as if it was an object she’d never felt before – my heart fluttered in pain. I wriggled in alarm and she tightened her grip without thinking, until my cardiac organ felt like it was being rawly pinched between her fingertips. More sweat trickled down my brow. My vision flashed white and red for an instant.

She answered smoothly, and without a beat:

“LIKE WINNING FIRST PLACE IN A SPRINT AND GETTING THE GOLD TROPHY.”

“HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR RELATIONSHIP? MANY PEOPLE WOULD SAY YOU TWO MAKE AN UNUSUAL PAIR.”

“OH, JERRY’S THE NORMAL ONE. I’M A STORM AND HE’S THE CALM IN THE CENTER.”

The interviewer levelled some other questions at Jen. My awareness snagged as my heart started firing like an automatic gun, sending blood fluttering throughout my body.

The interviewer appeared to note my flushed, sweating countenance and called a short break. I stared up and identified Jen’s face against the bright, swimming lights. She was biting her thumbnail, faintly troubled. I couldn’t say why because I couldn’t recall the previous two questions. My awareness was bouncing and flashing.

“Got any aspirin?” I asked, and heard my own voice inside my head through what sounded like a wall of water.

Her eyes drifted down to me, brow tensing slightly.

“YOU OKAY?”

“Joint pain. That medicine I’m taking…”

Her expression turned to steel, but she said nothing. She dug into her handbag and broke a tablet out of the foil sheet. I gnawed at the tablet desperately, until a corner had been worn away, and threw out the rest.

One of the assistants stepped out the door, and the incoming stream of outside warmth was like a soothing balm against the unflinching cold of the thermally-controlled studio. I asked to step outside. Jen gave me a look, shifting forward in her chair as if to stand. I shook my head and waved her off, padding over to the door, held open by the assistant.

The studio’s chemical agent smell dissipated out the back door into the fresh air of the gated car park, which dried up my perspiration immediately. The air quickly turned harsh with the smoke from an assistant who’d come out with me for a cigarette. I paced around to get clear of the smoke trail and then propped my laptop-sized phone against a brick wall. I didn’t have a cigarette to look busy with, so I tried to look engaged with my phone, checking if I’d received any calls while my phone had been muted during the interview.

The screen scrolled through my recent call list and stopped on a number I didn’t recognize, from some weeks back, the one Raf had caught. Wanting to look like a phone call was the reason I’d gone outside all along, I pressed the ‘dial back’ option, and waited for it to pick up. Then, staring out across car park, I waited for the call to pick up.

Even as the number was dialling, a thought occurred to me: where had the woman even gotten my number? I didn’t go handing out business cards.

The phone was still dialling.

I wracked my brains for any memberships I’d signed up to recently and willingly volunteered my phone number. There was only the personal training – could it be Larissa? But she would have left her name, and I doubted Raf would have described her accent as ‘sexy’ or even an ‘accent’. It had to be a work thing, I decided, regardless of whatever Raf said. One of the modelling people, a fashion editor, clothing brand representative, or entertainment journalist. Not strictly ‘work’ but ‘work-related’.

The phone still wasn’t picking up.

Alternatively, I knew that, for a fee, you could source people’s contact details via contact or ‘skip’ tracers. Jennifer had told me about it, based on her own enquiries with a private investigator. But that gave me a creepy feeling. As the phone rang the final time, I’d already firmly decided it was not some creepy fan stalker, but was a media rep with a legitimate business enquiry. So, while the phone rang, I put on my business face.

The phone picked up and a woman’s voice answered:

“Pronto. Listening.”

She had to be a secretary. People in entertainment didn’t dial direct. Wanting her to flip me onto the real string-puller, I launched right in without pause:

“Hi, this is Jerry Mousseau. I received a call from this number about some business.”

“Jerry. Thank you for returning my call.”

It was a half-British, half-Italian accent, and I was awash in an uncanny feeling like in a dream; the kind of dream of somehow, impossibly, stumbling into a room with no doors. Even a booty call wouldn’t have had my heart galloping like this. And this wasn’t something aspirin could fix.

She was speaking again:

“The business in question refers to a proposal of mine, to you: if you are not too busy, I suggest we meet somewhere soon.”  

My throat tightened as I tried to say something, nothing came out.

The voice on the end faltered.

“…Could you…give your response now…?”

Now my throat was working again, but my mind was blank. It didn’t even occur to me to end the call.

From the other end, barely audible:

“Cazzo…”

“I heard you,” I said, but with a weird, disconnected feeling like someone else was talking, “there’s a lot going on right now, I’m not sure I understand where you’re going with this, and I could be called away again any second—”

“Then I will keep it brief: what time were you planning to depart Skyros on Friday night?”

My jaw dropped.

“Where did you – How did you know about that?” I gasped.

“Your secretary told me, eagerly.”

Raf? I thought. Well then, he needed a better ‘front-office’ screening system for incoming calls, I decided – ‘sexy accents’ got far too much priority.

She remarked in her brisk, disaffected way:

“I must say a casino would not be my first preference locale for rendezvous.”

“It’s a nightclub,” I grunted. Then: shut up Jerry, don’t give away even more details.

“Where are you?” I demanded.

She didn’t say. Instead:

“I travel. It would not be difficult for me to reach you.”

I had nothing to say to this. It did not compute. In the meantime, there was a small murmur on the other end, like she was thinking.

“If I was to catch you there,” she went on, “it wouldn’t inconvenience?”

My brow screwed up as I closed my eyes.

Inconvenience who – me? What about her? Where was she calling from, a prison cell? ‘Catch you there’ on what – her parole? What the heck was going on—?

“Um...I’ll be with a group. It’s on them.”

“Then, another time might be more suitable? Or, perhaps our paths will cross elsewhere.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

I punched the hang up option and then stared down at the phone warily, as if it might lunge at me like a wild dog. My breath felt thin like I’d just been running, and my brow clamming up, even with the warming beams of sunlight stretching down past the clouds. But the aspirin must have kicked in, my chest soon calmed.

Still a little shaken, I returned to the studio. Jen looked at me but I avoided her eye. I was lifted back onto my chair and the interview quickly resumed.

“HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOUR FAMILY TO ADJUST?” The interviewer's eyes were piercing into mine. I tried to keep my gaze on her face, even as her enormous shoe was bobbing large to the side of my vision.

“My mother died when I was younger," I answered, "and my dad and I never really saw eye to eye,” I replied. “My shrinking compounded that –” literally and figuratively, I thought. “He has a life with a new woman.”

“LET’S GO BACK TO THE WOMAN IN YOUR LIFE. YOU MET YOUR fiancée BEFORE THE SHRINKING.”

“We ran into each other by accident three years ago, and we haven't been able to be rid of each other since.”

“AND SHE WAS AT THE PARTY, SO…SHE SAW IT ALL HAPPEN?”

“Yes.”

“THAT MUST HAVE BEEN SO AWFUL.”

She directed this enquiry at me. I paused and then answered:

“I was unconscious. Only my fianceé knows what it was like. But it sounds like it was completely…“

The rest of the words wouldn’t come.

Jennifer had once given me an abrupt, breathless summary of the GPR night. But she’d told me the parts I already knew; that I’d been shrunk and ended up at her house. She’d never actually said how she’d felt about it, what had been running through her mind the moment I’d shrunk. And why it specifically occurred to her to take me to her house.

“Well,” I said hastily, “it sounded like it must have been…It seems like from her point of view it was…I mean, if you asked her, she’d probably say it was—”

All eyes were on me. The cameraman shuffled in place, anticipating an imminent ‘cut’ to put me out of my misery.

“You’d have to ask my fiancée,” I concluded.

So the interviewer did.

“UNEXPECTED, FOR SURE,” said Jen. Once she started, her slightly husky voice got its own upbeat, propulsive momentum as she became quickly comfortable talking in front of the camera. “IT WAS—”