Someday, Someday, Maybe: A Novel

by Lauren Graham

  “Yes?”

  “This all happened yesterday, and I came home and decided I’d start over, keep working on the script, submit it somewhere else. I’ll just work harder, I thought. But nothing came. I couldn’t write. That’s never happened to me before. I’ve never not been able to write.”

  I remember the night I sat with Everett, when she compared Dan’s work to some juvenile rite of passage, “like backpacking through Europe,” and that it was she who mentioned seeing The Phantom of the Opera, and being dazzled by the effects that Dan and I were just mocking. But I don’t think Dan needs to hear my thoughts on why he and Everett weren’t right for each other at the moment, or my theory about how people can be divided into groups based on whether their reaction to the chandelier in The Phantom of the Opera is sincere or ironic. With a start, I realize my hand is on his arm, and I’ve been absentmindedly stroking his tan corduroy jacket this whole time, in an attempt to soothe myself, I think, as much as him. I pull it away quickly and sit up straighter on my bar stool.

  But then we order a third round, and Dan a fourth, and the crowd in the dining room thins and the lights seem to dim, the bottles behind the bar transforming into a colorful blur like an abstract water-color. As he pays the bill I try to remember when the last time was that I had three drinks in a row without any food to go with them except for a few free crackers that we spread with soft cheese from the little pots they offered at the bar. When I try to stand up, I almost lose my balance and I have to grip the back of my bar stool to steady myself. Then it comes to me: I’m pretty sure the last time I had three large drinks in quick succession on an almost-empty stomach was never.

  “Izzat Lisbeth Taylor?” I hear myself slur, as I weave unsteadily toward one of the framed caricatures on the wall, bringing my face almost close enough to kiss the glass. I squint my eyes and blink a few times, but I still can’t seem to make sense of the blurry signature beneath the drawing.

  “Nah. Nutter,” Dan says, coming up behind me to take a look. “Ishhhhtockard Shhanning, I think.”

  “Whahh?”

  “Not her, I mean. Ishhhtock—’scuse me.” Dan clears his throat, takes a deep breath and steadies himself by leaning one hand on the wall. “It. Is. Sssstockard Channing, I think.”

  “Ohhhhhh yeah! It is her! I love her, don’t you?” I say, turning to face Dan and clapping my hands. “She looks so good, don’t you think? She’s so talented! I saw her in—”

  Dan leans his other arm against the wall, so now I’m enclosed on either side in a sort of Dan-tent, and then he leans his whole body against me and kisses me, deeply and softly, in a way that makes the whole world go silent. There’s no sound, no past or present, nothing at all except me and Dan kissing while Stockard Channing gazes down at us, her pastel-pencil red lips smiling in approval.

  In the distance, the silence is broken by the faint sound of silverware clinking, and even that is soothing, a sound like little bells swaying in a soft breeze.

  I’ve never kissed anyone in a public place. Not like this. Clark wasn’t one for reckless displays of affection. He’d hold my hand, but that’s about it. I’ve never cheated on anyone, either, although I try to tell myself that just one drunken kiss isn’t so bad. Even so, I know I’ll feel embarrassed and guilty in the morning. I can tell even now, through my drunken haze. But for tonight, I feel too good to feel bad. For tonight, it all seems oddly inevitable. If only I hadn’t run into Genevieve, if only Dan hadn’t been lying on the sofa, if only James had called, if only the lights at the bar weren’t so pleasantly dim, if only I didn’t stop to examine a portrait of Stockard Channing. It almost seems as if it couldn’t be helped, as if this was supposed to happen.

  “It’s okay,” Jane will tell me in the morning. “You needed to feel good. You’re just friends who got confused. Just steer clear of each other for a while.”

  And without even having to discuss it, that’s exactly what Dan and I will do.

  Starting tomorrow, I’ll draw a line in my mind between myself and Dan, as if we’re two kids traveling in the backseat of a car who need an imaginary wall to give us the illusion of having our own space.

  I’ll be more careful from now on, I promise myself.

  After all, I know better than anyone what can happen when you accidentally go the wrong way down a one-way street.

  21

  You have one message.

  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.