6
You know, Frances, you did really well tonight. You have two callbacks and they’re both with respected agencies but if I had my way you’d just study for another year and not start auditioning yet. It’s such a different skill than the work we do here and you can develop some bad habits so please whatever happens don’t stop training. The business will take your energy and class will be more necessary than ever; you have to keep filling up the well. You’re so young and God this business can be so draining. I wish it wasn’t the way but try to work in the theater. Don’t forget the goals you had for yourself. It’s so easy to give in to a paycheck but if you aren’t doing work that feeds you and feeds the audience you’re only contributing to the worst in us as a society. We need to see the human condition reflected by artists—that’s what this calling is—and don’t forget that you have real ability and you’re a gifted comedienne, and that can have the worst traps of all. It’s such a talent to be able to make people laugh but God forbid you end up on something joyless and soul-crushing like that show with all the nurses.
(Hello, New York!)
The first person I spot outside the theater is Deena, smoking with a few other classmates. Deena is one of the older members of our class, in her forties maybe, and is still sort of famous from a show she did in the ’80s called There’s Pierre, which I remember watching all the time growing up. But she never mentions it, so I don’t either. She’s one of my best friends in class, but I wonder sometimes how she feels about having gone from the lead of a hit TV show to commercials, which is mainly what she does now. And not the kind where she’s playing Deena Shannon, formerly of the hit show There’s Pierre, but just a regular actor pretending to like one brand of orange juice over another.
“Anything?” she asks, flicking an ash on the ground.
“Um, yeah, actually. I got two callbacks, with agencies.”
“Yeah!” she says. “You only need one.”
“I almost quit show business tonight,” I say, a little breathless, still astonished to have gone from complete despair to something like euphoria in such a short time.
“Again? You just quit two weeks ago.”
“I did?”
“You’re a sensitive kid,” she says, laughing. “That’s okay. You’ll get tougher. Let’s have non-farewell-to-show-business drinks instead. I’m meeting Leighton at Joe Allen. Want to join?”
Deena and I sit at the glossy wood bar at Joe Allen, crowded with actors whose shows have just let out and patrons who’ve come from the theater. I almost feel as though I belong in this crowd tonight, or that it’s possible I could someday.
“Absolute Agency! You’re kidding me! Look at you.” Deena hugs me hard when I tell her the news, her perfectly polished red nails squeezing my arms. “Rock star!”
“And another agency called Sparks.”
“Sparks! That’s Barney Sparks. It’s just him. He’s the whole office. He’s great—he’s been around a long time.” Deena holds her wineglass up, already half empty, and smiles. “Another toast. I’m really happy for you. It’s a real sign of encouragement. I think you may make that deadline yet.”
Later, Deena’s boyfriend Leighton Lavelle walks in. He’s tall, with a long nose and curly light brown hair that makes him look like a guitar player in a ’70s rock band. Deena waves, and he slips easily through the crowd and kisses her on the lips. “Hello, Angel,” he says and orders a drink from Patrick, the bartender, before claiming a space among the crowd between our bar stools, where his lanky frame just barely fits. I’ve met him a few times but I’ve never been this physically close to him. He won a Tony last year for Shining Country, and it’s silly, but it takes my breath away to be this close to an award-winning actor. Some of his show makeup is still visible around his collar. I try to imagine what it might be like to have just come from a show on Broadway. The thought makes my heart pound, but to them, it seems to be no big deal.
“How was it tonight, babe?” Deena asks him.
“Not great. Shitty house. It’s this stupid weather. They over-cranked the heat and it made them really sleepy.” He glances down, shuffling his feet, then looks up and breaks into a grin. “Jesus. Listen to me. Blaming them. That’s what we all say, right? It couldn’t possibly be us, could it?” Deena laughs and so do I. He rolls his eyes at me, including me even though he hardly knows me. I allow myself to imagine I’ve just come from a show, too, and have my own theory on the temperature of the house and its effect on the mood of the audience.
“What about you, Franny?” Leighton says. “When will we see you out there?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and even the idea makes my head go light. “Someday, I hope.”
Leighton’s hand rests on Deena’s shoulder as he plays with her dark, glossy hair. “And you, my love?”
“Probably never,” says Deena, happily.
“But why not? It’s every actor’s dream to perform on Broadway,” I protest, and she gives me an indulgent smile.
“I don’t mean to shit on your dream, sweetie. But I’m mainly out of show business these days. This is as close as I want to be to that life,” she says putting her arm around Leighton’s waist. “I just lost what the point of it all was—and anyway, no one is exactly breaking down my door.”
“You never know, sweetheart,” says Leighton, “The New York Times said some very nice things about her, Franny.”
“Ancient history,” Deena says, but she’s smiling.
“And what about …?” Ever since I saw Deena in class, I’ve wanted to ask about the series she did, and tonight, with a drink in my hand and the giddy flush of the day behind me, I’m finally feeling bold enough to bring it up.
“The show?” she says, sharing a look with Leighton, who smiles sympathetically.
“Sorry—I don’t mean to …”
“It’s fine,” Deena says, shaking her head. “You, I don’t mind telling.” She takes a deep breath, and exhales with a sigh. “Well, it goes something like this: I did this play when I was just starting out—”
“The one The Times liked,” adds Leighton.
“Yes, but I hadn’t worked much after that, and, while it got nice notices, it was only a little thing, downtown, no money. I had, in general, no money at all. But my agent called—”
“Your then agent,” says Leighton.
“Yes, a fellow who is no longer with us—”
“He’s with us, generally speaking,” says Leighton.
“But he’s not my agent anymore—”
“A scumbag,” Leighton says, winking at me.
“He would later reveal himself to be a scumbag, yes, but at this point I was still thrilled to have him, and he said—”
“ ‘I’ve got an audition for you, sweetheart,’ ” Leighton says, in his best sleazeball Hollywood agent voice. “ ‘It’s something kinda special.’ ”
“He said ‘the elements’ were there,” Deena continues. “I didn’t know what that meant, but he made it sound important. It was a high-concept half-hour pilot, he said—‘cutting edge’ was the exact phrase he used, I believe. He said it had taken some convincing to get me an audition since I had no television experience, but they’d agreed to see me. So I read the script, and it doesn’t seem like a TV show to me, but I’m used to reading plays where anything can happen, in the world of someone’s memory, or whatever—”
“You were used to reading things that were abstract,” Leighton says.
“Or imaginative, not totally set in reality, yes—so I’m picturing what it could be, if done correctly. Plus, it was very political—”
“It was?” I say, surprised.
“Oh yeah. Before they changed it and tested it and ended up putting it on Friday night? It was supposed to be the next All in the Family. So I call my agent—”
“The scumbag,” Leighton says.
“I call the scumbag, and I say—what is this? Is this for real? And he says—” Deena pauses, as if the next part of the story is particularly hard to tell. “And he says, ‘Only two things will happen with this: one—it’s a giant hit and you’re thanking me every year at the Emmys, or two—they’ll make the pilot, it won’t work, it’ll never air. There’s no scenario in between. If, for some reason, they put this on the air and it isn’t a hundred percent fantastic?’ he said …”
“ ‘It’ll never last,’ ” Deena and Leighton say together, then Deena slaps her palm to her forehead, as if she still can’t believe it. “But he was wrong—it lasted for a long time.”
“Right,” Leighton says. “They fired the show runner, took all the politics out of it, replaced that with fart jokes, added that obnoxious kid to the cast—”
“York the Dork?”
“Him,” Deena says. “And moved it to Friday night at eight, where it lay there, winning neither awards nor merciful cancellation, for seven years. Seven years of my career, of my youth! The guy who played the boss was a drunk, never showed up on time, York the Dork banged extras in his trailer, the head writer thought himself some sort of genius, and it was all a thoroughly miserable experience. And that, my friends, is the story of how I came to spend seven years on the very-definitely-not-cutting-edge series, There’s Pierre.”
“The talking cat from France!” Leighton says triumphantly. “All together now!”
“Sacre bleu!” we all say.
“Also why I’m mainly out of the business of show,” Deena says.
“So why even keep doing it, then?” Leighton asks, a smile playing over his face, and I can tell he already knows the answer, but I lean forward, because I don’t, and I’ve often wondered the same thing.
“Because, Leighton, as you well know, there’s one thing I have left to do, one thing only that I actually care about, one last dream that hasn’t been beaten out of me, and I won’t leave this horrible business without it.”
“Tell her, Dee,” Leighton says with a grin. “Tell Franny what it is.”
Deena turns, eyeing me from beneath her long eyelashes.
“Just about every actor in this city who’s worth a shit has something on their résumé that I don’t have. And I’m not stopping until I get it.”
“What’s that?”
“A part on a show that I can one hundred percent say I’m right for.” She takes a deep breath and narrows her eyes and says, slowly and deliberately, “I won’t quit until I get something on my favorite show: Law and Order.”
“You’ve never been on Law and Order?” I say, surprised. “But you’re perfect for it …”
“I know. I’m even Irish and Italian. Who knows cops and criminals better?”
“So, why? You haven’t auditioned for them, or …?”
“People known for being on the most ridiculed talking animal show of the last decade sometimes have a hard time being taken seriously.”
“But that was eight years ago!” I say, indignant.
“Funny thing about this business,” she says a little sadly. “It’s hard to tell ahead of time what they’ll forget and what they’ll remember.”
Eventually, the three of us stagger out of the bar, among the last to leave. We form a triangle on 46th Street, just like the one we had in the bar: Deena and me across from each other with Leighton in the middle. I realize I’m swaying slightly. The air is cold but gentler now, and I’m feeling giddy.
“I love you guys,” I say, fighting back tears, and Deena gives me a big hug.
“Wow. You really can’t hold your booze, can you?” she says, still hugging me.
“Well, I love you guys, too, so there,” Leighton says. “Deena, my one true, let us to home.”
“It’s late, honey,” Deena says to me. “You’re taking a cab, right?”
It can be dangerous to take the subway all the way to Brooklyn this late. I should take a cab, she’s right, but I’m too embarrassed to tell her I have only about eight dollars in cash on me, and probably less than twenty dollars in my bank account, so I can’t even go to a cash machine. I’ll get tips and a tiny paycheck at my shift at the club tomorrow night, which I’ll take directly to the check-cashing place on the skeevy part of Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, which will charge me almost a quarter of the check to turn it into immediate cash, but I can’t wait the five to seven days for the bank to clear it or the electric bill will bounce. Jane is the best friend ever, but a bounced utility check sends her into a very dark place.
Without waiting for me to reply, Deena smoothly stuffs a twenty in my hand and hails a cab.
“You’ll get me back next time. Keep in touch this week, okay? Let me know how it all goes.”
As I fold myself into the backseat of the cab and wave goodbye out the window, Leighton and Deena wave back. “Sorry in advance about your hangover!” he yells, and Deena blows me a kiss.
I give the driver my address and though he grumbles about the distance to Brooklyn, he finally agrees to take me, and we race down Ninth Avenue. The neon signs that sometimes glare too loud and lonely seem warm and friendly now. Tonight, they blink cheerfully at me, almost in unison, as if in celebration, letting me know they’re glad I decided to stay.