“Lola, I need you to check all the rooms and storage closets, make sure there’s nothing we need to order. Marlene, you’re going to do the dishes tonight while your dad and I call all these people.”
Marlene looked up in surprise. Frankly, so did everyone else. Marlene never got asked to do anything. She opened her mouth, possibly to object, then closed it decisively.
“Come on, Mar,” her dad said, getting up. “I’ll show you how to do the first few. We’ll get a system going.”
Lola got up as well to start her round of the hotel. This left Scarlett and Spencer.
“Why do I have the strangest feeling that there is something you all want to tell us?” their mother said.
“Tell you?” Spencer asked, looking to Scarlett and shrugging. “I don’t think so…”
“Not me,” Scarlett added, trying to plaster on an innocent expression.
More troubling silence, then she lost control of the serious expression she had been trying so hard to hold.
“You two help Mrs. Amberson get her things and move her back in. Oh, and Spencer…”
She reached into her pocket and produced a card.
“Someone came by and left this for you. He said he saw you here last night. I won’t even pretend to know what that means.”
Spencer took the card and read it, then quickly passed it to Scarlett. It read: TOM HICKMAN, COMMERCIAL CASTING. Along the bottom, there was a line added in pen that said, “Call tomorrow re: washing machine commercial.”
A few hours later, Mrs. Amberson sat on her perch in the Empire Suite, twitching like a bug. She had chewed up a dozen tea-tree sticks while waiting for Spencer to carry up all her bags from the lobby. She seemed to have acquired some more things during her stay at The St. Regis.
Spencer collapsed onto the bed next to Scarlett after the last bag.
“I’ve been thinking,” Mrs. Amberson said, pulling out another stick. “You’re going to need an agent. You don’t have one, do you? Commercial or straight?”
“No,” Spencer said. “I could never get one before. No one would talk to me. I was way too unemployed. I’m still unemployed. It’s just an audition.”
“It’s more than that,” she said. “They’ve seen you. This is a callback, at the very least. I have a good feeling about this.”
Even exhausted, Spencer was crackling with energy from all the news.
“You know,” Mrs. Amberson said, “at a big agency, you just get lost in the shuffle. They spend all their time on stars and big-money clients. What you need is an agent with a small list, dedicated to building your career. Someone who wants to nurture you to the top, make you a big client.”
“Do you know someone like that?” Spencer asked.
There was a light in Mrs. Amberson’s eyes that Scarlett immediately recognized.
“I believe I do,” she said. “Someone with years of experience in the theater world, who knows their way around a contract, someone with nerves of steel and total dedication. Someone who is just starting to build a list of new clients.”
“Who is it?” Spencer said. “Can you put me in touch, maybe give me a recommendation?”
Mrs. Amberson smiled her slowest, most toothpaste-commercial-ready smile.
“There’s some money on my writing desk,” she said. “Do me a favor and run to the corner deli and get me a pack of licorice? I have such a craving for it. I’ll make a call or two while you’re gone. And pick up one of those organic protein smoothies they make. That’s for you. Make sure to drink it. They’re delicious.”
After Spencer sprinted from the room, Mrs. Amberson looked to Scarlett.
“One of the first goals will be to put ten pounds on him,” she said. “Muscle mass. Also, I wonder if that girl Stephanie is ever going to stop being so annoyingly professional and finally ask him out. That is a situation to watch over the next few weeks, O’Hara. I’m sure there’s something we can do about that…I like my clients to be happy and fulfilled. Keeps them out of the tabloids.”
“You’re not an agent,” Scarlett said. “You don’t have clients.”
“I’m not an agent yet. But I will be as soon as I call one of my lawyer friends and have her draft me up a contract for your brother to sign. I’m perfect for this, Scarlett. Molding people. Forming relationships. Lunching. What do you think I should call it? I was thinking AA for Amberson Agency—but that acronym is taken. But hey, most actors have belonged to the original AA, they might just want to join the new one as well. I could get a gorgeous monogram made. The cards and stationary will be exquisite. A double A, linked together and overlapping. Oh, that’ll look like an M, won’t it? Maybe I’ll just do back-to-back A’s, then.”
As usual, Mrs. Amberson’s priorities were well in order.
“I’ll need an assistant, of course,” she went on. “Someone reliable. Someone invested.”
“I start school in a few weeks,” Scarlett said warily. “There’s so much to do and…”
“Then it’s perfect! You couldn’t find a better after school job than this. What is there to lose?”