11
I’ve hatched a plan, but it all hinges on Ricky, the waiter who almost got my shift that day. And so far, all I’m getting is his machine from the pay phone outside Absolute Artists. Ricky has a very long outgoing message, in which he performs a combination song from Evita/Cher impersonation, and it seems to take forever for the beep to finally happen.
“Ricky. Ricky. Ricky. Ricky. It’s Franny. Ricky, pick up. Please pick up. Please oh please oh please—”
“Franny! You’re so sweet to call! Wow, everyone must really be talking. I’m thankful, really, for all the support.”
“Ricky, thank God you’re there. I have a favor—I’m wondering—well, the thing is, I just got an audition for Kevin and Kathy. I’m supposed to be there right now.”
“Oh.” Ricky sounds disappointed. “So you’re not calling about my … Is Kevin and Kathy even still on?”
“I know. That’s what I said, too, to the uh, the agent. But yes. It’s in its ninth year or something, and it isn’t on right now, it’s on break or—hiatus, I think he called it, waiting for a time slot, but it’s going to air again soon and—”
“Wait. So, did you get an agent? From that Showcase thing?”
“Um, I’m not sure, I think so. Maybe.”
“Already?”
“Uh, like I said, it’s not, totally … but maybe, yeah.”
“Huh. What’s the part you’re up for?”
“It’s just called ‘Girl Number One.’ ”
“Huh. So you’re not calling because you heard about my show?”
“No, I’m sorry, I was calling to see if you could take my shift tonight.”
“Oh. Your shift. Hmmm. I don’t know, Franny. Why don’t you just let Herb call one of the understudies?” he asks, a little too innocently.
“Ricky, please, you know how crazy that makes him. I thought maybe if you showed up, he’d get confused, since he was trying to get you to take the shift the other day, and maybe that’s what he’d think had happened, that we did what he originally asked and maybe he’d, uh, get confused, like I said, and I wouldn’t get in trouble.”
I sort of trail off at the end, because saying it out loud makes my shaky plan sound even flimsier.
Ricky takes an excruciatingly long, deep breath.
“Fine.”
“Fine? Yes? Oh Ricky, thank you so much—really, I owe you one, big time.”
There’s a pause on the other end. Maybe I haven’t gushed enough.
“Thank you, really. Thanks again. I should go, ah—”
“Frances.”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me about my show?”
“What? Yes! I’m sorry. Tell me.”
“Well. I’m pretty excited, actually. I just got booked to do my one-man show, Insights, in the basement of Hooligan’s.”
“Hooligan’s? That’s great! That’s—where is that again?”
“You know. The Irish bar on Second Avenue. It has the basement where Claudia did her poetry reading.”
“Oh yeah! That Hooligan’s, yeah, such a great space. Congratulations.”
“I was supposed to have a rehearsal for it tonight, in fact.”
“You were? Shit. I’m sorry. Thank you again. At least, you know, you won’t have to call too many people. To reschedule your rehearsal. Since it’s a one-man show. And you’re the one man, right?”
I chuckle nervously into his silence, but eventually manage to get off the phone with more apologetic thanking and promises to be the first in line for his one-man show.
Riding up in the elevator to my audition, I think about the basement of Hooligan’s. I’ve performed in an evening of one-acts there, and in far worse spaces, but I allow myself to imagine those days are behind me. Maybe this is the elevator ride where I go from amateur to professional, in just twenty-five floors.
“Excuse me,” I say to the receptionist, whose metal desk has a paper sign taped to it with “Kyle and Carson Casting” written hastily in black Magic Marker. “I’m supposed to pick up the script for the ‘Girl Number One’ character?” I can see she has a very small television hidden behind her desk. She seems disappointed that she has to look away from it to deal with me.
“What?”
“Sorry. I’m looking for the Girl Number One sides?”
She eyes me dubiously.
“Joe Melville sent me?”
At the mention of Joe’s name, half of the dozen or so heads in the waiting room snap to attention. I feel a combination of embarrassment and pride. I shouldn’t have said it so loudly, but I like the way it sounds.
“You’re here for the Laughing Girl?”
“I guess so, if that’s the same thing, uh, yes.”
“Laughing Girl has no lines. She just laughs.”
“She just—so there’s no, uh, scene?”
“Nope. She’s a girl. She laughs. They want a funny laugher. That’s it. Take a seat. They’ll be with you in a minute.”
I squeeze onto the lumpy sofa next to a skinny brunette wearing high-heeled black boots and funky glasses. I should wear high-heeled boots instead of Doc Martens, I think to myself, as I break into a nervous sweat. I should get some funky glasses. I should have a funny laugh.
Funny laugh. Funny laugh. Why can’t I think of a funny laugh? I should make a list of things I might have to do at a moment’s notice. There are the things we all know we’re supposed to have: monologue—comedic and dramatic; song—up-tempo and ballad. But there’s a serious lack of information beyond that. Today I need a funny laugh, but what else should I know how to do? Roller-skating, maybe—that seems to come up a lot lately. Jokes. I should know more jokes, in case I ever get asked if I’ve heard any good jokes lately, but I’m not a good joke-teller; I always mess up the endings. Maybe I should try to memorize a knock-knock joke at least, just in case.
Focus. Focus. Funny laugh. Shit.
I’m not naturally a particularly funny laugher, and I’m at a loss to think of anyone who is. Wait—Barney Sparks had a funny laugh, but that’s one I don’t think I can duplicate. There’s too much naturally occurring lung blockage in his laugh for me to attempt to reproduce it, and trying could possibly cause me to faint. Who else laughs funny? It seems all I can think of are people who have completely normal ways of laughing, or Fran Drescher from The Nanny. But that’s her laugh. It’s only funny the way she does it. Or is that what they want? Someone who can copy someone else’s already funny laugh, rather than try to invent a better one? Now all I can think of is the laugh from The Nanny. Maybe that’s what I’ll do, then. I can’t think of anything else. I’ll just try to do a really good version of the laugh from The Nanny.
The girls are coming and going out of the audition room with incredible speed. It seems like they’re only going in and laughing, then leaving immediately afterward—no discussion, no chitchat. I realize I can hear some of the laughs through the thin wall, and can therefore tell which actresses they’re responding to and which ones they aren’t. I try not to hear, try to keep my mind set on what I’ve decided to do and not get distracted by someone else’s funny laugh. But I can’t help it—I hear a girl do a kind of honking thing that gets a big reaction—maybe that’s what I should do. Honking’s funny. I’ll do a honking, nasal laugh, like I have a cold or—
“Frances Banks, you’re next.”
Shit. I’m not ready and I’m the last one left in the room. I’d ask for more time, but there’s no one to go in front of me.
And suddenly I’m facing four people who are looking back at me, and I still have no idea what I’m going to do. A man with glasses sits in the closest chair.
“Hello there, Ms., uh—Banks, there we are. As you’ve probably figured out, we’re looking for your funniest laugh. You can begin whenever you’re ready.”
“Okay, great!” I say, too forcefully. “So should I do it into the camera, or …” I’m looking around vacantly, not sure where to focus, somehow not finding where the lens is.
“Ah, there’s no camera here today, since there’s no scene, exactly. Tell you what. Why don’t you just do it for Arthur here,” he says, pointing to a painfully thin man with red hair and freckles to his left, who looks not exactly happy to have been chosen as my target.
“Okay, great. Can I just, sorry … I have a question?”
I think I catch an eye-roll from the other man in the back.
“Sure.”
“What is she—what am I—laughing at?”
There’s a moment of silence in the room, as if no one’s sure how to answer my question. Or maybe they’re shocked at the stupidity of it.
“Well, it’s just mainly a gag, you know?” says the man in glasses.
“A gag,” I repeat.
“Yes. A running gag. Like how she laughs on The Nanny?”
“But we don’t want it to sound anything like her laugh,” the man in the back of the room says emphatically.
“Yes, of course, it’s a laugh that’s all her own—just a girl who laughs funny. For no particular reason,” the man with glasses says.
“Okay, thanks. And, sorry, but, what do I do?”
“Do?”
“For a living. What’s my job?”
I can definitely see the man in the back roll his eyes this time, so broadly that the woman next to him swats him lightly with the script she’s holding.
“Well. We don’t know yet. Probably she’s Kevin’s secretary. You know our show? How Kevin keeps getting bad secretaries? Sort of like on Murphy Brown?”
“Yes.”
“So maybe she works for Kevin. But mainly, she laughs this hilarious laugh that will make our audience plotz.”
“Two scenes. No lines,” says the guy in the back. “Don’t over-think it.”
“Shush,” says the script-holding woman.
“Okay. Thanks. I think I’m ready.”
I look at Arthur, who shifts uncomfortably in his seat. I think of Kevin on the show, and in my mind, red-haired Arthur sort of becomes Kevin. The actor who plays Kevin is probably in his late forties by now, and still very handsome, but for some reason I think about the heartthrob he was when the show started ten years ago, and I was still in high school. He’d enter almost every scene with the line “Hello, ladies!” which became a popular phrase people used to copy. What if I’d been his secretary, just for one day, back then, when I was in high school and the show was number one. If I’d gotten that chance, especially then, I’d hang on his every word and try to do my very best, so he’d like me. But maybe I’d be so smitten and nervous in his presence that all I could do was laugh adoringly at everything he did.
My laugh is soft and light when it first comes out, and I’m me, but also the nervous teenage me I was remembering. Arthur’s face blushes a deep red, and I can see he’s not used to being the center of attention, and he’s liking it a little bit, and that makes me love him even more, and I pretend he’s just said the funniest thing I ever heard, not just to me but to a roomful of people, and I’m proud to be with him, proud to be the girl on his arm, and I’m so exhilarated by it all that the laugh gets even bigger, and turns into more of a gasp, and I’m almost panting now, in a weirdly inappropriate, almost sexual way that I can’t believe is coming out of my mouth, because it’s a sound I’d never be bold enough to make even in my own bedroom, but for some reason here I’ll do anything to let Arthur/Kevin/actor-who-plays-Kevin know how amazing and special and sexy and magnificent I think he is/they are, and my appreciation reaches its peak, and I’m almost totally out of breath, so I let it soften back down to the small giggle, and finally, exhausted but happy, I let out a little sigh that’s interrupted by an almost involuntary hiccup, like I gulped down too much champagne all at once.
It’s a blur from that point on, a series of snapshots that flash before me: the woman in the back mouthing “See?” to the disgruntled man, who nods and shrugs at her in a way that says “Who knew?” and the man in glasses asking me to wait in the waiting room, but then almost immediately coming back out to say I got the part, and the dreamlike experience of going back to Absolute and signing papers in Joe Melville’s office that say I’m a client of theirs now, and people smiling and shaking my hand, and then walking back out on the street at the most beautiful time, just as the sun is fading, knowing I don’t have to go to work as a waitress tonight, that I booked my second paying job in two weeks, and I can walk at a leisurely pace down Fifth Avenue and imagine that someday, maybe, I’ll go into one of these stores instead of just walking past them looking hungrily into their windows, that someday, maybe, I’ll be carrying a real purse and wearing heels like a grown-up lady instead of walking down Fifth Avenue in Doc Marten combat boots with an apron and a corkscrew and a crumb scraper in my canvas book bag.
Someday, someday, maybe.