Carrying over a bin of clean silverware and a stack of paper napkins, I slid into one of the booths and began rolling them together into sets. “So, what’s the dream now? Still composing? If I remember right, you were writing a show of your own. Did you ever finish it?” I asked.
Charlie scooted into the booth across from me and grabbed some forks and knives to join in. “I finished that one, and three others to varying degrees of success, but nothing Lin-Manuel Miranda–level yet. My biggest hit had a three-week run at The Public a few summers ago, which was pretty awesome. And I’m working on something now I think might have some potential.”
“That’s incredible. You’ll have to tell me a bit more about it sometime.” It was refreshing to talk with someone who really understood how the desire to create lived like a supercharged layer just beneath your skin. I’d set my eyes on being an actress ever since I was a little girl in Miss Mildred’s basement theater class, singing and dancing in front of anyone who would watch and listen. That same drive I’d felt since the age of five may have been dormant for a while, but with each shift at Mimi’s, I was realizing it wasn’t entirely dead like I’d thought, just hibernating.
I continued to roll silverware sets, my fingers working industriously as we chatted with ease. “So just biding your time here like the rest of us?”
“Mimi’s is my day job. Sometimes, my night job,” he joked. “But it gives me the stability to be able to pursue my passion.”
He’d hung in there all these years, believing in himself and his dream, and I couldn’t help but admire him for it. “But what if that big break doesn’t come? Doesn’t that scare you?”
He shrugged, and his bottom lip protruded in an expression that conveyed oh well. “It might not. And that’s all right. Through my maaaaannnny failures and relatively few traditional successes in this business, I’ve realized it’s not about the big break for me . . . not anymore. I guess in my youth it used to be, but I’d still do it all the exact same way even if I knew there would never be a pot of gold at the end of my rainbow. The art of making art, right?” He paused for a moment and grabbed another handful of silverware. “What about you? You ready to tell me what really brought you back to Mimi’s yet? Actually, let me guess, a magical toaster told you it was your destiny?” he teased.
“Very funny. Did I ever tell you I got a scholarship to Tisch? I was that girl. The one who always landed the leads in community theater and in high school. I guess I thought I would come to New York and it wouldn’t be long before I made my mark. But as it turns out, everyone at Tisch had been the lead in their community theater’s production of West Side Story or high school performance of Our Town. I started out so confident, so sure of myself, but over time I let nerves and self-doubt take hold. I began comparing myself to everyone else around me. Except when I was here at Mimi’s. Here, I could slap on some makeup and a silly costume and just perform. Not for a grade, an agent, or a part, but because I loved it. I guess, I just missed that. When performing used to be . . . I don’t know . . . fun?”
“It still is and can be. But it’s all a frame of mind. If you make it about the agent or the part, that’s when it stops being fun. You need to make it about the performance, the thrill of the audience, the character you’re playing. You need to get out of your own head and just live it. But either way, whether you start auditioning again or not, you were born to be onstage. I haven’t met many actors in my life for whom I can say that with such certainty. So I hope that you continue to use Mimi’s as your chance to practice and take risks and get yourself ready to get back on the horse because I think—no, I know—that though you’ve taken a few wrong turns along the way, you ended up back here for a reason.”
Charlie reached over and grabbed for my hand, uncurling my fingers from around the silverware I was currently white-knuckling. I hadn’t even realized how tightly I’d been grabbing the cold metal utensils.
I set them down, smiled up at him, and gave his hand a squeeze in return, grateful for his support. “Thanks for giving me a second chance. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had sent me easin’ down the yellow brick road,” I sang, trying to joke my way out of my pity party.
“You’re welcome, and besides, it wasn’t totally altruistic. You’re too damn talented to not be given a second chance.” He glanced at his Apple Watch, and realizing the time said, “Speaking of yellow brick roads, don’t you have some green makeup to go slap on?”
I nodded and slid out from the table, grabbing my bag and slinging it over my shoulder as I turned toward the dressing room.
“Hey, Dorothy?” he called.
I smiled and turned back to face Charlie. “Yeah?”
“I’m glad you’re back.”
“Well, you know what they say? There’s no place like home.”
As the diner was filling up with a hearty matinee crowd, I tucked my makeup case away right behind the trusty green Elphabear stuffed animal Marisol gave me before my Wicked audition. And while it wasn’t a good luck charm exactly, I couldn’t seem to part with it. I glanced at the clock and hurried to coat my verdigris in one extra layer of setting spray so as to not leave any green smudges behind this shift.
Checking the full-length mirror, I adjusted my witch’s hat as Lyla—in a bright-blue dirndl dressed as Maria von Trapp—waddled in after her set. Tangled in a mess of marionette strings from her tour de force performance of “The Lonely Goatherd,” Lyla firmly announced to the dressing room, “I am never performing that song ever again.” Her face was growing redder and redder with each swipe at the mess of fishline and puppets clinging to her lederhosen.
She looked like she was trapped in an actual catfight, and I couldn’t help but giggle. “Girl, you say that every shift. But then you count your dolla dolla bills, and before we know it, you’re out there yodeling for your supper again.”
“Look who’s talking!” she clapped back with a laugh. “But, you’d know better than anyone, no good deed goes unpunished, right?” She tried to throw her arms up in a see-what-I-mean sort of motion, but instead, one of the marionettes jerked up, a wooden foot clocking her square in the forehead.
I burst into another fit of giggles, extending my hands hesitantly toward her. “I want to help you so badly, but . . .” I held up my jade-colored digits.