21
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BEEEP
Franny. It’s Richard calling from Absolute Artists. Call me as soon as you get this. I have an offer for you.
BEEEP
These are the words I’ve been waiting for months to hear, and there they are, recorded ninety-five minutes ago according to the digital voice on the tape of my answering machine, but for some reason I haven’t called Richard back yet. I catered a lunch shift at a giant investment firm in the financial district earlier today, and it’s been almost fifteen minutes since I got home from the corner deli, where I bought a slightly bruised apple, a blueberry yogurt, and two fruit-punch-flavored wine coolers (they were on sale). I’m winded, as if I’ve come in from a run and not just a trip to the store, but I feel calm and focused, too, as if I’m about to take a final exam for a subject I’ve prepared for thoroughly.
I place the wine coolers, yogurt, and apple in the refrigerator. Then I change my mind and take the apple out and set it on the counter. I look at it for a while, as though it might open up its mouth and say something, then I take a knife out of the drawer and cut a piece that is slightly less than half, avoiding the core and the seeds. I take a bite and decide it tastes better than it looks. I finish the almost-half and run my hands, which have now become slightly sticky, under the tap, rinsing them, shaking off the excess water, then drying them methodically on a dish towel. From the center of the kitchen, I could almost reach out and touch a wall in any direction, but even in this small space I feel lost. I might as well be bobbing in the middle of the ocean. I’m so excited that I’ve gone completely numb. I’m in shock—that must be it.
I got a job, I got a job. After all this time, I finally got a job!
But which one?
I auditioned for a revival of Brigadoon at a regional theater in Poughkeepsie. I auditioned to play the quirky assistant in that new sitcom, Legs!, that takes place in a modeling agency and stars a formerly famous model from the ’70s. I auditioned to play someone whose purse has been stolen on that cop show where one of the policemen is alive but his partner is a ghost. I auditioned for two parts on two different soaps, one to play a college student who says, “Does anyone have the homework assignment?” I auditioned to be the co-host of a Saturday morning children’s show. I auditioned to represent a line of blenders on a home shopping channel, and I auditioned to say one line in an Eve Randall film: “Can I take your order?”
Maybe that’s the job I booked: “Can I take your order?” The casting person seemed to like me that day. Or was that the casting person who seemed to not like me? What day was it? What was I wearing? I could look it up in my Filofax, but I’d rather remember it myself. The job I booked has to have stood out in some way, some special way that separates it from the others.
“Can I take your order?” I say out loud in our tiny kitchen, to an imaginary Eve Randall sitting at a booth in the imaginary diner in my head. “The soup of the day is chicken noodle,” I tell Eve with a smile. Only the first line was scripted, but I had thought of more I could say for the audition just in case there was room to improvise, in case I had the chance to show something more than that one line, to prove I had thought about the waitress not just as a generic waitress, but as a person who was in the middle of a specific day, who got up late maybe, because she had a fight with her boyfriend the night before, who read the specials off the board that morning and wrote them down on her order pad, or maybe was the type who knew them by heart.
“It all started with one line in an Eve Randall film,” I will say to the audience assembled for An Evening with Frances Banks at the 92nd Street Y. “Can I take your order?” I’ll say, just like I did in the film, my very first, and the audience will laugh in recognition.
Finally I get up the courage to call the agency. “Oh, hi, hello there, it’s uh, Franny Banks, for Richard?” I say to the receptionist.
“Hold on a minute, Franny. Joe will be right with you.”
Joe will be right with me? Joe Melville is actually going to take my call? Now I’m nervous, since he and I haven’t spoken in so long. It makes sense, I guess, that he would talk to me only when there’s actually a job to discuss. Of course! This must be their system, that Joe calls only when it’s really necessary. I wished I’d figured that out earlier, and not spent so much time worrying about why he never called.
The classical hold music is finally interrupted after what seems like a very long time but was probably under a minute.
“Hello, Franny, congratulations, you’ve booked your first real job.” Joe sounds confident and familiar, as though we talk all the time.
I don’t want to correct him, but he must remember that I booked Kevin and Kathy, the very first audition he sent me on. Don’t be difficult, I think. Just be positive.
“Oh, thanks! Besides Kevin and Kathy.” Thankfully, Joe doesn’t say anything, so I blaze forward. “I’m excited. I mean, I think I’ll be excited when I find out which job it is.”
Joe covers the receiver for a minute and I can’t hear what he’s saying.
“Sorry about that,” he says, talking to me again. “I thought you’d been told. You got the female lead opposite Michael Eastman in the feature film Zombie Pond.”
The female lead in Zombie Pond! Wait. Zombie Pond, Zombie Pond. Of course I remember going in for a movie called Zombie Pond, but I’m struggling to remember the material exactly, and can’t recall going in for the female lead of anything. Surely I’d remember that.
It’s coming back to me, sort of. There were barely any lines in the scene. That’s the female lead? I don’t remember it going that well. There wasn’t a lot of dialogue—she screams more than she speaks. She’s described as quivering and whimpering quite a bit, and she gets tied up by zombies and left in the basement wearing nothing but her underwear.
That’s the job I got?
“Wait. Sorry. The girlfriend who gets locked in the basement?”
“Well, of course!” Joe says confidently. “They loved you!”
I am playing the female lead opposite Michael Eastman, in a story of a girl who’s being tortured by zombies while in her underwear? But I have no credits. Why would they give me the lead in a movie? I’ve never even said one line in a movie. I don’t look good enough in underwear. I must stop eating immediately, and possibly forever.
On the other hand, I allow myself a tiny flush of pride. I’m good enough to be in a movie opposite Michael Eastman. I saw him the other night on Entertainment! Entertainment! wearing a tank top and walking on the beach with some actress he’s dating. I’m going to be in a movie with him? James will be impressed. Well, maybe not impressed exactly, but not horrified. Michael Eastman’s work is at least considered not horrifying.
I try to imagine myself as the actress he held hands with on the beach. I can almost picture myself with him, although it isn’t exactly me. It’s more like my head on the actress’s slight body, wearing her tiny pink bikini. Just me and Michael Eastman, walking on the beach together, admiring each other’s abs.
Joe covers the phone again and mumbles something, then comes back. “No, uh, sorry, not the girlfriend, not the lead. It isn’t the part you read for, apparently. It’s for the part of Sheila, the girlfriend he met in high school, the one we see in the flashbacks?”
Oh. My walk on the beach comes to an abrupt end. Sheila. I wasn’t given the whole script, so I have no idea whether Sheila is a good part or not. Of course I’m not the lead. But my sudden demotion is a disappointment nonetheless. Joe doesn’t seem to really have all the details straight. Now I’m suspicious. What if I didn’t really get that part, either?
“But so, you’re sure? I really got it? I don’t have to read again, or meet the producers or anything?”
“No, the part of Sheila is all yours. Film is different from television that way. The director has much more control. Plus, the character, while important to the plot, doesn’t have a heavy amount of dialogue, so he saw what he needed to see on your audition tape for the other character.”
“Okay,” I say, still unsure.
Joe covers the receiver and there’s a shuffling of papers and the muffled sound of Joe barking orders to someone.
“Uh, let’s see, here it is, I’m reading from the breakdowns here—it says: Sheila is killed by zombies while they’re seniors in college. Sheila’s death inspires Sutton to seek revenge, his anger propelling him into studying science and creating a poisonous serum in the lab, which transforms the zombies from the undead to the actual dead, enabling them to be extinguished blah blah blah …” More whispering from Joe’s assistant, then, “Oh sorry, I didn’t realize they didn’t give you the whole script. They try to keep these big horror movies confidential. Anyway, we’re faxing the pages to you now. It’s only two scenes, but she’s a very memorable character, like I said. Congratulations. The director found you very wholesome, exactly the sort of all-American girl next door whose death would inspire a man to kill. His words. So give it a look and then we can proceed with the clause and make sure we keep you protected. All right?”
I understood everything up to the last part of what he said, something about “the clause” and being “protected.” That must be agent jargon, something to do with the union or the contract or something. I’ll find out eventually. For now, I just want to get off the phone and look at the material. I just want to see what this “memorable character” gets to do and say. From the sound of it, even if it’s small, it’s something more than “Can I take your order?”
I can hear the light but quick creaking of someone jogging up the stairs, which tells me it’s Jane coming home. Dan coming up the stairs sounds heavy and deliberate. Dan is rarely in a hurry.
This is thrilling. Jane can be with me while I read the script for my first-ever actual acting job. The fax starts to ring, but I know it will take forever to answer and print, so I whip down the metal circular staircase to tell Jane the news.
“Jane. I got a job!”
She turns away from the counter where she’s unloading groceries and claps her hands, her face all lit up.
“Oh my God! That’s fantastic! What is it?”
“It’s a scary movie. A sort of thriller. They wouldn’t let me read the whole thing. It’s with Michael Eastman, who I know isn’t the greatest, but …”
“Franny, don’t do that. Don’t put it down. I don’t care if the movie stars Bozo the clown. This is amazing.”
“Bozo the clown actually read for it. Ultimately they thought he was too frightening, and they decided to stick with zombies. It’s called Zombie Pond.”
“You’re going to be in a movie with Michael Eastman, and a bunch of zombies? This can’t get any better! What’s the character like?”
“I play his girlfriend who gets murdered, inspiring him to go on a zombie killing spree! That’s all I know. I’m told it’s very memorable. It’s coming through the fax right now.”
There’s a key in the lock, and Dan appears with ruddy cheeks and a twisted paper bag that’s no doubt covering his single evening beer. I realize I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him—he hasn’t been sitting at his usual place at the dining room table, hasn’t been in front of our television with a beer in ages, and we haven’t had a real conversation since our drinks at Sardi’s. It’s been long enough now that our kiss has faded into something I can almost convince myself never happened. Still, it’s good to see him.
“Dan! I got a job in a zombie movie!”
“A zombie movie?”
“Don’t get too excited, Dan. She’s playing one of the humans,” says Jane, giving him a wink.
“Very funny, Jane,” Dan says. Then he turns to me. “That’s great, Franny!” And he adds, in a strange sinister voice: “They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”
“What?”
“They’re coming to … Oh, never mind. That’s the famous line from Night of the Living Dead. Forget it. Zombie history lesson later. For now, I have forty ounces of malt liquor in my hand to toast you with. Who do you play?”
“It’s coming through upstairs. I’ll go get it and we can all read it.”
“I know,” says Jane. “Why don’t you and Dan read it out loud, together? He can play Michael Eastman’s part!”
“Uh, no thanks,” says Dan with a frown. “That’s a bad idea. I’m a terrible actor.”
“Aww, would you Dan, please?” I say, grinning. “I haven’t read it yet. I’d love to do it out loud for the first time. It will be like a cold reading.”
“A cold, dead, zombie reading!” Jane exclaims. “Come on, Dan, this is a big occasion. Do it for Franny. I promise to be a kind critic.”
“There’s no such thing,” Dan says, but then he shrugs in surrender. “Okay, Franny, I’ll read it with you.”
I take the metal stairs two at a time. I’m flying.
“Who is Michael Eastman?” I hear Dan ask Jane from down below.
There they are on the floor of the landing, the pages that contain my first real job, my first real character with an actual name. “Sheila,” I say out loud, trying on the suit of my first real character whose name doesn’t include a number or the word “the.”
I decide I won’t even skim the pages before reading them with Dan. This is like an exercise we do in class sometimes where Stavros gives us pages from something we’ve never seen, and we cold read them out loud, piecing the character and situation together as we go. It’s an exercise I love. I’m better the first read sometimes than I am after I’ve rehearsed, after I’ve had time to doubt my choices.
I pick up the pages, all five of them, and take care not to uncurl them yet. I glance at the page numbers in the upper right-hand corner to put them in order but resist the urge to look any farther, and head back downstairs. Dan has put his glasses on, as he does when he’s working intensely on something. He looks a little nervous, as if he’s about to give his campaign speech for class president. Jane is playing director and fussing with the dining room chairs, pushing the table out of the way.
“I need to know where this takes place. I need to properly dress the set,” she says, gravely regarding her furniture placement. “Here, let me see those. Two scenes, right?”
She separates the pages into the first and second scenes, picks up the first scene, and reads.
INT. LAB–DAY
SUTTON is hunched over his microscope. The lab is hot. Stifling. A trickle of sweat rolls off his forehead and onto the microscope slide. He sighs. He will have to start again. He removes his shirt, trying to cool off. Sutton’s girlfriend,
SHEILA
(20s, fresh-faced), enters.
Jane cracks up, lowering the pages. “Hahahahaha! Remove your shirt, Dan!” She collapses onto the sofa in laughter.
“Jane, please,” I say. “Get a grip. Don’t crumple those. Can we take this seriously? Dan, you may remain clothed for the purposes of this rehearsal. Now, Jane. Who has the first line?”
“You do. Excuse me, Sheila does. Here.” Jane hands the script to me, then dutifully sits upright on the sofa.
“Ready?” I say to Dan.
“Okay,” he says, even though he looks unsure.
“We’ll just pass the pages back and forth okay? No looking ahead?”
“Okay,” he agrees.
“And … action!” says Jane.
SHEILA
(enters quietly, watches Sutton unseen for a moment, then)
Knock, knock. Hello, Professor. Am I interrupting you?
SUTTON
I’m not a professor yet. And no, not at all. I was actually just thinking about you.
SHEILA
Well, I hope so, dressed like that.
SUTTON
(laughs)
Well, it is about a hundred degrees out. And I figured, no one around but me and some lab rats.
SHEILA
(laughs)
Well, I’ll let you get back to work. I just wanted you to have this, for tonight.
Sheila opens her bag and hands Sutton a thin wrapped package the size of a manila envelope.
SUTTON
(taking the envelope)
Thanks. What is it?
SHEILA
(smiling, eyes shining)
It’s a secret. It’s for tonight. No peeking until then. Promise?
SUTTON
I promise.
SHEILA
Well, tonight, then?
SUTTON
Tonight, then.
HOLD on Sutton as Sheila exits. He looks down at the package, then back to where she has just exited. His eyes fill with love; he is overwhelmed by her. A single tear falls, and he smiles.
SUTTON (CONT’D)
Tonight.
There is silence in the apartment. Jane looks at each of us in turn, then leaps to her feet, applauding loudly.
“Yayyyyy! I loved it! I felt it! The heat! Also the temperature! The lab experiments! The nearby rats! I felt it all! I laughed! I cried! It was better than Cats!”
“Jane, shush, the neighbors,” I say, but I’m laughing, too.
“But seriously,” Jane says, with a grin. “That’s a pretty long scene!”
“I can do something with it, don’t you think?” I say proudly.
“Definitely,” says Jane. “You’re like, the ingénue. You’re Michael Eastman’s babe!”
Dan is still holding the sides up close to his face, the pages practically touching his glasses, so I can’t exactly see his reaction.
“Dan?” I say. “What do you think? I mean the script isn’t too terrible, right?”
“I was distracted by having to read it out loud,” Dan says, a bit grumpy.
“But you’re not the actor we’re paying attention to in this scene, Dan,” Jane tells him. Then, trying to help, she says, “Come on, be a pal. Say something nice to Franny about her new job.”
Dan thinks for a second, then says, “The dialogue isn’t bad, although too many sentences start with ‘Well.’ ” He pauses, then as if he can’t help himself, he adds, “And the single tear at the end is unrealistic.”
Jane and I just stare at him. Then we look at each other. That’s his reaction to my first-ever reading of my first real acting job?
“The movie is called Zombie Pond, Dan,” I tell him. “I’m not sure realism was at the top of their list.”
“Well,” Jane says, sarcastically. “Well then, let’s read the second scene, shall we? Well?”
“Sorry, you guys,” says Dan. “I suck. I don’t know how actors do it. I want to help. Can I just read this next scene to myself first before we do it out loud?”
“Of course,” I say to him generously, then I turn to Jane and roll my eyes. “These method actors!”
“Here you go, Mr. James Dean, sir,” says Jane, handing him a single sheet of paper. “It’s just the one page. What a drama queen he is! Don’t quit your day job, Danny.”
Dan pores over the single sheet, holding it tightly on either side. He’s taking forever, reading so slowly, and I’m feeling a little impatient. I want to know what happens, and what I say.
“How many ‘wells’ in this scene, Dan?” I joke, trying to hurry him along. But he doesn’t answer.
“Dan, you look like you’re reading your own obituary,” says Jane. “Chop-chop.”
Finally he looks up, regarding each of us with a serious expression. “This is wrong,” he says.
“What’s wrong? What do you mean, wrong? What do I say?”
“Nothing. You don’t have dialogue in this scene. But this is wrong. They can’t do this.”
“Dan, what are you talking about? Let me see.” I take the paper from him, my heart pounding.
INT. SUTTON’S HOUSE—NIGHT
Sounds of lovemaking. A Motown singer croons soft and low from the stereo. The camera PANS across the floor. Sutton’s sneaker. Sheila’s bra. We see a velvet ring box on the nightstand, opened but empty. We see remnants of the wrapping from Sheila’s gift, and as the camera moves closer to the bed we see it’s a framed collage, homemade, simple but beautiful, the word “yes” repeated a hundred times in different sizes and shapes and colors. She knew tonight was theirs. The ring on her finger says the proposal went well.
CLOSE-UP on Sheila’s face. She is on top of Sutton, riding him, moaning softly, when—her eyes POP open. She GASPS for air, a stifled gurgle of a SCREAM as BLOOD pours out of her mouth, blocking her throat, she can’t breathe! PAN DOWN to reveal: a ZOMBIE emerging—CLAWING its way out from INSIDE Sheila’s body, rupturing Sheila’s chest as it struggles to be free, screeching with the effort. But it isn’t a ZOMBIE we’ve seen before, it’s a SMALLER ZOMBIE with the eerie face of a child, at once sinister and innocent, it, too, gasping for air, the undead born anew! SUTTON SCREAMS, tries to stop the flow of blood, but he knows it is too late, they have possessed her, they have killed her. And with that realization comes the next, as the truth of what has happened dawns and a look of horror crosses his face …
SUTTON
(whispering)
They’re hatching …
The screen fades to black
“See what I mean?” Dan says, waving his hands. “It’s outrageous.”
“Sheila’s bra?” I say.
“What’s with the collage?” says Jane, reading over my shoulder.
“They can’t go changing the existing rules,” Dan says. “Everyone knows Zombies can’t ‘hatch’; that’s just ridiculous.”
I’m still staring at the page. “A zombie emerges—wait—from where?” I say.
“Ohhh, I get it,” Jane says. “Sheila knew Sutton was going to propose to her that night, so she made him a collage of the word ‘yes.’ ”
“ ‘Riding him’?” I say to myself. “ ‘Moaning softly’?”
“I hate these movies where they blatantly defy a well-established trope,” Dan continues indignantly. “Zombies are, and have always been, the walking dead. How could the walking dead procreate? They have emerged from the grave, from the dead—”
“Oh shit, I didn’t even think of that,” says Jane, looking up at me.
“Well, no, I mean you wouldn’t,” says Dan. “But I’ve seen every one of these … and I can tell you—”
“You’re topless,” says Jane, reality dawning. “Shit.”
“They have to follow a sort of code—and—wait. What? You’re topless?” says Dan, his face going pale. “Oh. Oh, Franny. Shit.”
“I’m topless,” I say.
Shit.