She pulled herself off the floor and placed the kettle on the granite counter, then opened a cabinet to reveal three packed shelves full of boxes of organic herbal teas. She plugged in the kettle and filled it from a bottle of spring water. It set to work with a polite hiss.
“New headshots,” Scarlett said, holding up the bundle of envelopes. Mrs. Amberson reached for them and started ripping them open, tossing the envelopes to the floor and extracting the glossy headshot photos and résumés. Once you’d seen a dozen headshots, you felt like there was too much sameness in the world. Pretty people smiling big smiles, sometimes leaning forward casually, sometimes leaning against something. Or you’d just get a big close-up of their beautiful eyes and perfect skin and teeth. Actors. So many actors.
“Tea?” Mrs. Amberson asked, not looking up from the parade of faces.
“Is there coffee?”
“O’Hara, you know that caffeine is the great dehydrator. It’s like a vampire. Invite it into your body and it sucks all the moisture right out. That’s the real fanged bandit. It will drain you dry and…”
The rest of the remark was lost under the keening cry of the kettle, which apparently couldn’t take the vampire comparisons anymore. Mrs. Amberson switched it off, then fiddled around in her herbal tea emporium for a moment, putting a spoonful of this dried-up thing and that dried-up thing into a tea ball, finally dropping the whole mess into a cup and covering it with hot water.
“We’ll let this steep for a moment, O’Hara. That is a very potent brew. Some very special teas and ingredients in there, from a very special shop in Chinatown…some of them not entirely legal in the United States. This stuff is better than any medication on the market, and certainly a lot faster and better for you. I feel that the word ‘detoxify’ is overused, but that is exactly what this does. Now, these new headshots…”
She flipped through them all again for a few seconds each. The few that she thought were worth a second look she set on the side of the counter. The majority of them she dropped in one big sloppy pile. Scarlett picked up her tea and sniffed it carefully. It smelled like cooked pencil shavings and just a tiny, tiny bit like burning plastic. She set it back down again.
“God,” Mrs. Amberson said in disgust, “I’m just not getting the quality that I’m looking for. I’ve set my bar, and it’s high.”
She pushed the photos to the floor in dismissal.
“What’s wrong with those?” Scarlett asked, looking at the faces of actors around her feet. They looked sad and desperate now, smiling all around her shoes, asking to be picked up. They had done nothing wrong. They just wanted a chance.
“No spark,” Mrs. Amberson said. “You can see it at once. You know when you see it.”
“How can you see a spark in pictures? They all look the same.”
“Exactly.” Mrs. Amberson gulped down some tea, even though vast clouds of steam were still coming off of it. “They all look the same. We need Chelsea. She’s the key. She’s our next step.”
Scarlett picked the pictures up from the floor and piled them on one of the bar stools. She had to do that much for them.
“That’s all for today,” Mrs. Amberson said. “Oh, but you have to deliver something very important. Do you see that large envelope over there on the bookcase? Take that with you. Your brother has an audition tomorrow for Crime and Punishment! He’s reading for the part of a young pervert! He’ll enjoy that!”
“Crime and Punishment? You mean, like, to be on the show with Sonny Lavinski? The Crime and Punishment?”
Scarlett liked Crime and Punishment. Everyone liked Crime and Punishment. Crime and Punishment had been on TV as long as she’d been alive. It had four spin-off shows and was on in reruns pretty much all the time on one network or another. And wisecracking lead detective, Sonny Lavinski, was pretty much her favorite character on any show. Everyone loved Sonny Lavinski.
“I’ve been talking to the producers for a while,” Mrs. Amberson said, “since one of the directors came to see Hamlet. They have real interest in him. I’ve been working on this for weeks, but I didn’t want to say anything until it came through. Make sure he looks at the pages tonight. The audition tomorrow is at four. I have a very good feeling about this one.”
BAD OMENS
The moving van had come while Scarlett was out and the stage platform and lights were gone. Only the chairs remained, scattered around in a confused fashion. Hamlet was truly over, and the room was once again an underused, dingy dining area. Scarlett took a moment to stand alone in the empty room, listening to the echo of traffic outside, the creak of the floor. The feeling of loss was so profound that for a moment, she couldn’t breathe. Something wonderful had happened here—something confusing, but wonderful—and now it was gone, and it would never come back. The show was permanently over.
She probably would have started crying, but she was startled by a noise behind her. Quick little steps in the lobby.