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The next day I picked up a copy of the coupon circular where Mrs. Honigbaum’s columns were published. I found one at the pawnshop across from the bakery where I bought my cinnamon doughnuts. Then I boarded an express bus going east on Melrose. I took a window seat and laid the circular across my lap. Mrs. Honigbaum’s columns ran side by side on the last page. I found my horoscope. “Virgo: You will have trouble with love this week. Beware of coworkers talking about you behind your back. They could influence your boss. But don’t worry! Good things are in store.” It was nonsense, but I considered it all very carefully. The gossip column was just a list of celebrity birthdays and recent Hollywood news items. I didn’t know anybody’s name, so none of it seemed to be of any consequence. Still, I read each and every word. Suzanne Somers is suing ABC. Princess Diana has good taste in hats. Superman II is out in theaters. As I watched the people of Los Angeles get on and off the bus, I felt for the first time that I was somebody, I was important. Mrs. Honigbaum, who cared so much about me, wrote columns in this circular that traveled all across the city. Hundreds if not thousands must have read her column every week. She was famous. She had influence. There was her name right there: “Miss Honey.”
Oh, Mrs. Honigbaum. After our fourth dinner together, I found myself missing her as I lay on my bed, digesting the mound of schnitzel and boxed mashed potatoes and JELL-O she’d prepared herself. She made me feel very special. I wasn’t attracted to her the way I’d been to the girls back in Gunnison, of course. At eighteen, what excited me most was a particular six-inch length of leg above a girl’s knee. I was especially inclined to study girls in skirts or shorts when they were seated beside me on the bus with their legs crossed. The outer length of the thigh, where the muscles separated, and the inside, where the fat spread, were like two sides of a coin I wanted to flip. If I could have done anything, I would have watched a woman cross and uncross her legs all day. But I’d never seen Mrs. Honigbaum’s legs. She sat behind her desk most of the time, and when she walked around, her thin legs were covered in billowy pants in brightly colored prints of tropical flowers or fruit.
One morning, I stopped off at Mrs. Honigbaum’s office on the way to the shower, as usual.
“Darling,” she now called me, “I have something for you. An audition. It’s for a commercial or something, but it’s a good one. It could put you on the map quick. Go wash up. Here, take this.” She came out from behind her desk and handed me the address. Her handwriting was large and looping, beautiful and strong. “Tell them Honey sent you. It’s just a test.”
“A screen test?” I asked. I’d never been in front of a real movie camera before.
“Consider it practice,” she said. She looked me up and down. “What I wouldn’t give,” she said. “That reminds me.” She went back to her desk and riffled through her drawers for her pills. “To be young again! Well, go shower. Don’t be late. Go and come back and tell me all about it.”
It took me several hours to get to the studio in Burbank. The audition was held in a small room behind a lot that seemed to be a place where food deliveries were made. The whole place smelled faintly of garbage. Two slender blond girls sat in folding chairs in the corner of the room, both reading issues of Rolling Stone. They wore tight jeans and bikini tops, huge platform sandals. The director was middle-aged and tan, his chest covered in black curls, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. His beard was long and unruly. He sat with a script open in front of him on the table and barely lifted his gaze when I walked in. “Honey sent me,” I said. He didn’t stand or shake my hand. He just took my head shot and flicked his cigarette butt at the floor.
He must be doing Mrs. Honigbaum a favor by allowing me to audition, I thought. He could have been a former tenant of hers. If he’d be reporting back to her, I wanted to perform better than ever. I had to be perfect. I slowed my breathing down. I focused my eyes on the blue lettering on the cameraman’s T-shirt. GRAND LODGE. The cameraman had huge shoulders and hair that flopped to one side. He winked at me. I smiled. I chewed my gum. I tried to catch the eyes of the girls, but they simply sighed, hunched over their magazines.
It turned out to be the longest and most challenging audition I’d ever had. First the director had the cameraman film me while I stood in front of a white wall and gave my name, my age, my height and weight. I was supposed to say my hometown and list my hobbies. Instead of Gunnison, I said, “Salt Lake City.” I had no real hobbies, so I just said, “Sports.”
“What do you play—tennis? Basketball? What?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I play everything.”
“Lacrosse?” the director asked.
“Well, no, not lacrosse.”
“Let’s see you do some push-ups,” he said impatiently. I did ten. The director seemed impressed. He lit another cigarette. Then he told me to mime knocking on a door and waiting for someone to answer it. I did that. “Be a dog,” he said. “Can you be a dog?” I sniffed the air. “What does a dog sound like?” I howled. “Not bad. More wolf than dog, but can you dance?” he asked. I did a few rounds of the electric slide. The girls watched me. “Needs work,” the director said. “Now laugh.” I looked around for something funny. “Go. Laugh,” he said, snapping his fingers.
“Ha-ha!”
He made a mark on the paper in front of him. “Now be sexy,” he said. “Like you’re trying to seduce me. Come on, like I’m Farrah Fawcett. Or some chick, whoever, some girl you want to lay. Go.” He snapped his fingers again.
I’d never had to do anything like that before. I shrugged and put my hands in my pockets, turned to the side, pursed my lips, winked at him. He made another note.
“Come in for a close-up,” the director said to the cameraman. “Stand straight, dammit,” he told me. “Don’t move.” The camera came about six inches from my face. The director stood up and came toward me, squinted. “You always got zits up there between your eyebrows?”
“Only sometimes,” I answered. I tried to look at him, but the lights were too bright. It felt like I was like staring into an eclipse.
“Your eye’s messed up, you know that?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s a lazy eye.”
“Work on that,” he said. “There’s exercises for that.” He sat back down. “Now be sad,” he said.
I thought of the time I saw a dead cat on the street in Gunnison.
“Be angry.”
I thought of the time I slammed my thumb in the car door.
“Be happy.”
I smiled.