by Rowe, Brian
Today, I find my true love.
---
The session was near its end, and Vivien hadn’t found anything close to a true love.
Brandon closed the door and started going through the session page by page, trying to find a candidate who would be most suitable for her. Vivien had only circled a couple of names.
“How about this guy? Julian Samuel?”
“No,” Vivien said. “Looked like he had skin cancer.”
“He had kind of a smoldering thing going.”
“No. Not right.”
He flipped to another page. “How about that Dylan fellow? Dylan Montgomery.”
“His nose bothered me.”
“He was hot! I mean, for a forty-year-old.”
“Next.”
Brandon flipped through the pages, all the way until there were just two more to go. They had maybe twenty more actors to see. After that, their little experiment would be over.
“There’s still a few more to go,” Brandon said. “It’s only five o’clock. There’s another hour, at least.”
“I guess you’re right. But things aren’t looking good. I might be heading into this weekend alone.”
He shook his head and patted her awkwardly on the back. “Don’t think like that, V. Think positive.”
He walked over to his camera and replaced it with the fourth new battery of the day. He made sure he had another mini DV tape in the camera and turned to Vivien.
“Are you ready for the next actor?”
Her face went pale. “HOLY SHIT.”
He stopped and stared at her. She looked like she was going to faint. “Whoa! What!”
“Did you just say it was five o’clock?”
“Huh?”
Vivien jumped up from her chair and ran up to Brandon as if she were going to tackle him to the ground. “What time is it?”
She grabbed his wrist and looked down at his watch. It was 5:10.
“Oh no!”
“What? What is it?”
“I forgot. I completely forgot. Gavin’s agent’s gonna kill me!”
“Stop!” Brandon grabbed her. “What’s going on?”
“My son’s audition! It’s in twenty minutes!”
“Can it be postponed?”
“No! They can only see him today!”
She ran out of the audition room and passed a yawning actor in the hallway. She flipped through her planning book and started dialing a number.
When she returned to the audition room a minute later, she had calmed down a bit. “OK. It’s OK. They can see him as late as 6:30.”
“Oh good,” Brandon said. “But isn’t that still too late? How are you going to get there in time? We have at least another hour’s worth of guys to see here.”
Vivien grabbed her associate’s hands. “Brandon, can you take him?”
“What?”
“Can you take my son to his audition?”
He looked at her dumbfounded. “Uhh, yeah, V, of course. But who’s gonna run the camera?”
“Screw the camera. I don’t need it.”
Brandon glared at her. “Well fine.”
“Here,” she said, digging through her purse for cash. She pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. “This should be enough for gas. If there’s a parking fee, let me know, and I’ll reimburse you next week.”
“OK. Where is Gavin, anyway?”
“He should be at home. The place you went for my birthday party last week.”
“Oh yes,” he said with a sigh. “How can I forget?”
“Can you do this for me?”
He smiled. “Yes, of course.”
“Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Brandon started walking out of the audition room. He turned back to Vivien one last time. “Good luck.”
And with that he was gone.
-39-
The clouds were chocolate black and rain was pouring down with the ferocity of falling daggers as Brandon pulled up to the driveway of Lila Perrington’s home in Woodland Hills. He grabbed an umbrella from the back seat and raced from the car to the front door. He rang the doorbell, and waited for nearly a minute for Gavin to open it. He had a big frown on his face.
“What’s wrong?” Brandon asked.
“I can’t find my dog.” Gavin folded up his scenes for the audition and looked at Brandon’s car. “Wait. My mom’s not taking me?”
“No,” Brandon said, shivering in the cold. “She had to finish a casting session, so she sent me.”
“Oh, OK.” He examined Brandon’s umbrella. “Was it really necessary for you to use an umbrella just to get to the front door? What is that? Like ten steps?”
Oh my God, it’s Vivien the second.
Despite his snarky comment, Gavin used Brandon’s umbrella for the short walk to the car. Brandon wanted to make a joke about it but decided it best to keep his mouth shut.
Brandon never wanted to admit it to his boss, but he actually enjoyed driving Gavin to his auditions. He would get to leave the office early, and she wouldn’t call him or text him once during the entire journey. Plus, she gave him gas money. And since his dad was still paying for that, it was money in his pocket.
Brandon started winding his way through the neighborhood when he noticed just how insanely heavily the rain was pouring down. “Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. Just this weather.”
“Rain freaks you out?” Gavin asked.
“It does not.”
A total lie.
Gavin laughed. “Wimp.”
“Shut up. Shouldn’t you be looking over your lines or something?”
“I don’t need to. I have them memorized.”
“But just to be sure?”
“I’m good.”
Brandon turned onto another street, this one narrower than the last. A car was parked on the side of the road in a giant puddle of mud.
He dropped a wad of gum in his mouth and took his eyes off the road for only a moment when a car sped past him, blasting water up against his windshield. “Whoa! My God, this is some crazy rain.” He turned his windshield wipers to their highest setting.
“Dude,” Gavin said. “Calm down.”
“I hope your Mom’s gonna be OK driving tonight. It’s gonna be dark out by the time she finishes her session.”
“My mom can hold her own. What are you, a pussy or somethin’?”
“I’m not a pussy.”
“My mom told me you like guys. That’s cool, I guess.”
Brandon took his eyes off the road again and stared over at Gavin. “What was that?”
“Yeah. It’s cool. It doesn’t bother me.”
“Your mom told you I’m gay?”
“She talks about you a lot actually,” he said. “I think you’re really important to her.”
She talks about me? Around her kid?
“Wow, I had no idea,” Brandon said.
He turned onto another road. He thought he could see a traffic signal in the distance, but it turned out to be his imagination.
“I think we should make it on time,” Brandon said. “We still have a half hour.”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever?”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
“Your mom said this audition was for a Garry Marshall movie! I mean, shouldn’t you be more excited?”
The boy just shrugged.
“Look,” Brandon said, “can I ask you a question?”
Gavin looked at him with an innocent gaze. His eyes were big and brown. His hair looked curlier than the last time he’d seen him.
Stop it, Brandon.
“Do you even like acting?”
Gavin cracked his knuckles. “Of course I do. Why would you ask me that?”
“I mean, I feel like your mom got you into it when you were, like, two years old. Every time I take you to an audition, you seem bored and upset. It just seems like you’re not th
at into it.”
“How would you know? You don’t know me.” Gavin grabbed a Gatorade from his backpack and took a few sips.
“You’re right,” Brandon said. “I don’t.”
There was silence. Then Gavin started to smile. “I’m taking a creative writing class at school.”
“Oh yeah?”
A whole new demeanor struck Gavin’s face. He sat back and looked, for the first time this evening, relaxed.
Brandon tried to find a point. “So, what does that mean? You like to write?”
“It’s a lot of fun,” he said. “My new story’s about a creature who lives deep down under the ocean, where it’s been growing for the last two hundred years. It strikes on the busiest day of the summer down the coast of L.A. It’s gruesome and really scary.”
“So you like writing horror?”
“Yeah. I like science fiction, too.”
“Then you should write,” Brandon said. “To hell with acting. You’re young. Be a kid. Do what makes you happy.”
“It’s not that I don’t like acting. I just don’t know if I want to do it for the rest of my life.”
“Your mom should know this.”
“No,” Gavin said. “And don’t you tell her, dude, or I’ll be super pissed.”
Gavin took another sip of his Gatorade, and Brandon looked him over again.
No. Stop it.
Brandon turned onto another street, where he could finally see the signal up ahead leading to the 101 freeway. “You love your mom, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Gavin said. “She’s the best.”
“Most kids your age hate their moms.”
“Do you hate your mom?”
Brandon smiled. “My mom? She’s my favorite person in the whole world.”
“Really? No wonder you’re gay.” Gavin laughed, showing off his impressively straight teeth.
Brandon looked away from the street, which was impossible to see by now due to the rain, and glanced over at Gavin. He tried to fight it.
He’s thirteen. Stop it, you sick fuck.
Brandon didn’t desire Gavin in a sexual way. That would’ve been weird and incriminatory. But Brandon couldn’t deny Gavin’s beauty, and the impending hotness that he’d be in his young adult years. He took a deep breath as he analyzed Gavin’s baby soft hands, his complex eyes, and the way his plump red lips radiated a virginal warmness. His skin was a lot darker than his mom’s, and there was a glow to his face that made Brandon want to reach out and touch him.
“OH MY GOD!” Gavin shouted. “BRANDON, LOOK OUT!”
Brandon barely had time to turn his eyes back to the road when a dog ran out into the street.
“OH SHIT!” Brandon could feel the front left tire strike the animal almost instantly.
Oh no.
Brandon jerked the car to the right, running it off the road into a ditch.
“HOLD ON!”
Brandon put his arm out to stop Gavin from sliding forward. When the car came to an abrupt stop, Brandon let out a sigh of relief, looking to his right and noticing that Gavin had put on his seatbelt.
The relief faded fast, however, when Brandon saw the tears start falling from the boy’s eyes.
“Oh my God,” Gavin said. “What did you do?”
“What?”
“Buster!” He unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the passenger door. “OH MY GOD, BUSTER!”
“Gavin!” Brandon shouted. “Stop! It’s not safe!”
“I have to save him!”
“No! Stop!” Brandon kicked open his door just in time for another car to splash a tidal wave of water up against his face.
Completely drenched and ice cold, he turned to his left to see Gavin running up to the little white dog in the street. Its head was smashed in.
“Gavin! It’s not safe out here! Get back in the car!”
“YOU MURDERER!” he shouted. “YOU FUCKING MURDERER!”
Murderer? What?
Brandon took a few steps forward to confirm the dog was indeed Vivien’s and Gavin’s own Spanish Mastiff.
“Oh my God, Gavin! I’m sorry!”
“I have to get it out of the road!” Gavin dragged the dog’s carcass into the dirt ditch behind the car and kneeled down, as if he were going to surgically repair the dog’s face with his wet hands.
Brandon took a few more steps forward and put his hands on his hips. He turned around to see the signal to the freeway. They had been less than a minute away.
“Damn it!” He put his hands behind his head. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He decided to raise his voice to get the boy’s attention. “GAVIN! COME BACK TO THE CAR! RIGHT NOW!”
“NO!” he shouted, flipping Brandon off. “FUCK YOU!”
Gavin remained on the ground, naively trying to resuscitate the dog through any means possible.
Brandon continued to stare at Gavin, and despite all the madness of the moment, all the rain pouring down, and all the troubles that were headed his way when Vivien found out he ran over the family dog, he took a moment to notice just how nice the thirteen-year-old’s ass looked bent over in the pouring rain.
Give this kid a few years.He’s gonna be so fucking hot.
Brandon didn’t hear the car racing toward him from behind. It struck him in the back, and as he started tumbling over the windshield, he blacked out, almost instantly.
-40-
Vivien grabbed her pen, walked over to the sign-in sheet, and crossed off the last name.
That was it. She was done.
And nobody today had come close to her liking.
She got down on her knees and removed the five-paged sign-in sheet from the clipboard. She looked through it and started shaking her head. She sat down and put her hands in her face, exhausted from the seven-hour session, as well as extremely disappointed.
I failed. Online dating, here I come.
“Am I too late to audition?”
She thought she was hearing a voice in her head when she looked up to see a dashing older gentleman with a suit and tie standing before her, a pair of the audition scenes in his left hand.
“I would like to audition, if there’s still time.” His voice was British and sexy. He had a soft scruff on his cheeks and chin, and his hair was cut short.
“Uhh, sure, yes.” Vivien took a few steps toward him. “What’s your name?”
“Christopher.” He shook her hand.
His voice sounds familiar, she thought. Have I met this man before?
“Nice to meet you, Christopher. Do you have a headshot?”
“No,” he said. “I’m in the process of getting new ones, actually.”
“Oh, OK then. Come with me.”
Vivien led Christopher into the audition room and sat him in the hot seat. She took a seat across from him and put the three-page scene on her lap.
“Did you get a chance to read the script?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s brilliant. I love this character.”
Vivien turned around and grabbed her session sheet. “What’s your full name? I’ll check it off my list here.”
“Christopher Bells.”
Vivien looked through her sheet but didn’t see his name. “Hmm, I don’t see it. I’ll just write it in.” She glanced back at him. “And you’re reading for the role of Charles, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
She studied his face. Christopher looked like Gerard Butler, but with darker skin and silver-white hair. He was dashingly beautiful. He looked familiar, really familiar, but after having spent the day reading with over 150 actors, she wouldn’t be able to recognize her own face in the mirror if she tried.
“OK. Let’s begin.” Vivien cleared her throat and crossed her legs. She smiled at Christopher in a flirtatious way. He returned the favor. “And I’m gonna read with you,” Vivien added.
“OK, perfect.”
Vivien started reading the lines. The scene took place at the funeral, where Charles meets an American a
uthor who he falls immediately in love with.
As the scene continued, Vivien found herself surprised that an actor with zero film and TV credits was so natural. He didn’t look down at the script once, and he kept eye contact with Vivien, a must for actors who have to read with a casting director. The more she read with him, the more she was falling in love with his voice, as well as his dynamic facial structure.
The end of the scene required the character to stand up and kiss the older woman’s hand. Vivien didn’t believe he would actually commit to that detail, but he got up, anyway. He took three steps forward and stared down at her with a warm, friendly smile. He got down on one knee like he was going to ask her to marry him.
“May I?”
He took Vivien’s right hand and held it in his. For a moment, all time stopped, and she was the character in the scene. He kissed her hand and looked back into her eyes. She thought he was going to kiss her lips, too.
Christopher stood back up and smiled. He didn’t say anything, clearly waiting for her to be the first to open her mouth.
Vivien snapped out of her daze and started clapping. “That was extraordinary, just extraordinary. Wow.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. What can I say, Christopher? You are quite the find.”
Vivien stood up and went to shake his hand, but he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.
She was going to play it cool, but she couldn’t help it. When he backed away from her, she leaned in and kissed him on the lips.
The kiss lasted just a second or two before she pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” she said with a laugh. “That was inappropriate.”
She turned, but he pulled her straight back to his lips. They kissed for another minute, maybe longer.
Christopher held her close. “It’s quite all right with me,” he said. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since the moment I first saw you.”
Vivien didn’t take her eyes off him. He made it sound like he had pining over her for weeks, not minutes.
“I know this is sudden,” he said, “but I had a question.”
“Yes?”
“Would you care to have dinner with me tonight?”
Vivien smiled. “As fate would have it, I am completely free tonight.”
