SPOTLIGHT

by Dora Dresden

  “Well just make sure his ‘niceness’ doesn’t distract you from your other customers,” Aaron countered before wheeling away and heading into the kitchen.

  Abby wanted to roll her eyes like Noelle would have but it wasn’t her nature to be so insolent. Aaron was her boss after all, no matter how childish she was quickly realizing he could be.

  In the end Aaron would have it his way. Business steadily picked up in the restaurant from the post-work hours on. Abby scarcely had time to bring out the teenage tourists meals before three more parties were seated in her section. She was on the tips of her toes, running around the restaurant, greeting the diners with her usual cheer, albeit somewhat breathlessly. Even Aaron, who usually managed the restaurant sullenly from his office in the back, was on hand to greet customers and bring out meals.

  Every now and then Abby would have a moment to breeze by William. He was still at the table head-bent and immersed in his writing. Several more scraps of paper appeared before him filled with his earnest scribbling before he’d crush them up and start anew. Abby really wished she could sit down across from him, find out more about who he was and figure out what it meant that their paths had crossed for a second time, but there simply wasn’t time for that. As the dinner rush beckoned and the restaurant became more packed with hungry people looking to escape the sweltering streets, Abby had to amuse herself by simply filling up William’s coffee cup in passing and offering him a sympathetic smile.

  At one point she caught a free moment to bring him over a large piece of apple pie purloined fresh from the oven while Aaron wasn’t looking.

  “On me,” she said, proud of herself for the forethought. “You know that whole starving artist thing doesn’t have to be taken literally.”

  “Thank you. I tend to get distracted when I’m working that I lose track of time. And meals I guess.” William smiled sheepishly. He’s always smiling, Abby thought gleefully, he could fill my whole world up with smiles.

  Abby pushed down the thought and tried to reign in her suddenly blooming emotions. There was no time for those sorts of feelings to crop up, not now. She had to focus, and at the moment that meant working for tips so that she wasn’t starving.

  Abby was nearly successful in pretending that William wasn’t there, but Noelle soon came in as promised for the dinner shift and the other waitress would not stop shooting her meaningful looks.

  “So? Did you get his name?” Noelle asked as they stood by the kitchen waiting for the cooks to send their respective orders out.

  “It’s William,” Abby said with a blush.

  “Oh! Cute! He looks like a William,” Noelle gushed. She said his name in a languorous British accent like he was the lead male in a trashy Victorian romance novel.

  “Not now, Noelle,” Abby said, using the hot bowl of soup that had just come out as an excuse to escape the girl’s overly earnest third degree.

  When the two waitresses passed each other again in the aisle between two tables, Noelle leaned in with her usual mischievous grin.

  “So did you find out what he’s working on? Or is he just here to stare at you fondly?” She asked.

  “Not now, Noelle!” Abby repeated, giving her new friend a slightly less than gentle poke in the rib as they squeezed past each other.

  Still she couldn’t help but glance over at William. He was staring, or at least looking at her intently, a strangely serious look on his face. She gave him a little wave and he seemed to come out of whatever deep rumination he had been trapped in. He looked for a moment like he wanted her to come over and Abby wanted to more than anything, but Aaron was looking on at her from across the restaurant and there were at least three tables still waiting for their checks.

  Abby was at the computer entering another set of orders when Noelle stepped up behind her.

  “Abby,” the other girl began.

  “No more jokes, Noelle,” Abby chided, turning around. “I know he’s cute and perfect and a complete and utter gentleman, but I barely know him. Anyway the simple fact is I don’t have time for crushes. Especially not on guys I don’t even know. Especially not on literally the very first guy I met in the city.”

  Rant completed, Abby let out a long sigh, wiping sweat from her brow. Noelle cracked her gum, wearing a half grin.

  “Actually, I wasn’t going to make a joke,” Noelle said.

  “You weren’t?”

  “No. I was going to tell you that your sweetie just left.”

  “He’s not my sweetie” Abby said, but her stomach did a little somersault regardless of this fact. She looked beyond Noelle to the empty table that William had just vacated.

  Abby went over to it under the pretense of cleaning up the empty coffee cup and pie plate he’d left, her heart beating against her chest. Had she missed her opportunity again just as Noelle had warned she would? No, Abby thought, more likely I was over-thinking the whole thing. There was no connection at all, only a nice guy humoring a clumsy, bumbling waitress.

  As she approached, she saw that he’d cleaned up quite well, collecting his crumpled and ripped up scraps of notebook paper. However, one sheet remained. It was folded over several times and tucked under the coffee cup along with a twenty dollar bill, an overly generous tip for their mediocre free-refill coffee and one piece of apple pie.

  Abby plucked up the money and the folded wad of paper. On closer inspection she realized it had her name on it in William’s looping scrawl. She opened it up to reveal a short note and gave it a quick read.

  Abby,

  You looked so busy I didn’t want to distract you with my leaving. Just wanted to say goodnight and to tell you that I am happy our paths keep crossing like this. Maybe we can meet again soon?

  Nothing would make me happier,

  William

  He’d written his number across the bottom of the page in big bold letters as if he wanted to be sure she didn’t miss it, and he’d even drawn a little smiley face with earnestly raised eyebrows.

  The excitement coursed through Abby in wonderful little bursts, like fireworks exploding in her chest. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this excited to get a phone number. The answer was probably never. Usually they were from self-obsessed guys with awful dated pick-up lines and dishonest intentions. It seemed silly, but there was something about William that made her inherently comfortable. She was not a love at first sight girl, not by any means, but things were beginning to feel … thrilling.

  Tucking the sweet little note into her apron pocket, Abby cleared the table, humming some sweet little nonsense tune to herself, some little wordless song she’d had stuck in her head all day but couldn’t place. Noelle shot her a knowing glance as they passed and even the sight of another crowd of hungry guests entering the restaurant couldn’t put a damper on her suddenly elevated mood.

  Chapter Four

  It was one of those days in which Abby knew she was being tested. In truth, it had been one of those weeks. New York City stayed locked in the grip of a mid-June heat wave of historic intensity and length, and it seemed like the city’s inhabitants were likewise trapped in a singular uncharitable nature. It was becoming apparent that everywhere people were easily frustrated, particularly on the streets or in the subway and Abby began to fill up with a deep-seated homesickness. In South Meadow she’d often chaffed under the well-meaning nosiness of the “everyone knows your name” community, but in Manhattan the number of rude strangers she was jostled against when out and about was downright dispiriting.

  At work at the Home Sweet her patrons had left without tipping, more times than she could count, and the fact that those tips made up the majority of her pay left her looking despairingly at her dwindling savings account. One group of diners had even simply left without paying their bill at all, a fact that Aaron, her manager, had somehow decided was her fault. The money they’d lost on that meal had partly come out of her pay check for the day, serving to depress Abby even further.

  But the icing o
n the particularly lousy cake had come that morning. Noelle had told her about two auditions on nearly completely opposite ends of the island of Manhattan. She’d gone to both a few days prior though they were back to back. The first had been a bust and the director of the small musical had told her almost instantly that she didn’t fit his vision of what he was looking for. He hadn’t given her any more concrete feedback and had acted as if she had wasted his time.

  The second audition had been more promising with a call back that morning. The first phase had been a monologue about which Abby had felt pretty confident. The call back had required her to sing with a piano accompaniment straight from the book. She’d trained for such things, taken extensive lessons for much of her life but she always felt a little wary about her sight-reading of notes. That anxiety announced itself in her voice and Abby found herself falling flat on a few notes. They’d thanked her for her time and said she’d done perfectly well, but Abby had heard a few of the other girls’ auditions and she didn’t have high hopes.

  It was in God’s hands she knew, but she couldn’t help feeling down. Angelica would have nailed that part, she thought to herself as she returned dejected to her apartment.

  Her twin sister, older by three minutes, had excelled at most everything they did. Abby had a way of stepping out of the limelight so that her sister could steal the show. For the most part Abby didn’t mind being in Angie’s shadow but it often made her unsure of herself where a little confidence was the backbone she truly needed.

  Singing had been Angie’s most crowning gift. To hear the townsfolk of South Meadow tell it, you would think Angie had the voice of the angels she’d been named for. She sang constantly, from silly pop songs on the radio while they were in the car on the way to school to breath-taking devotionals on Sunday mornings. They might have sounded alike, so much so that even their best friends had trouble sorting out which twin had answered the phone, but Abby could never hope to compare to her sister’s heaven-sent singing voice and most of the time she didn’t try.

  Still, missing out on opportunities like this because of her old fear of displacing her twin was silly. Abby knew the life of an actress was filled with day to day rejection coupled with the occasional drop in a bucket moments of success. She’d prepared herself for as much especially in a locale as competitive as New York, but it did not mean that such rejection didn’t still sting each time.

  Finally, home in her apartment with another day of taxing auditions and back-breaking diner work behind her, Abby, though exhausted, could not sleep.

  She’d done everything she could think of, cleaning up her small apartment that was quickly getting cluttered from her neglect. She had taken advantage of the hour time difference to call her parents and had a long chat with them. She had kneeled in prayer asking for patience and guidance and understanding, most importantly of all, understanding of the Lord’s plans for her. She’d read a little from her Bible, an act that always soothed her. She had even lain in bed like she used to back home, staring up at the ceiling, pretending Angie was lying beside her. Abby would try to imagine that they were close as they had been, saying out loud their dreams in round robin style. And though she came to some reconciliation about the things she couldn’t change, she still could not find the calm to drift off to a peaceful, much needed sleep.

  Abby blamed the classical music. It was still playing. It had been in fact playing nearly non-stop for the past few days. Sometimes it came through the walls low and steady and Abby rather enjoyed it. She had as of yet been unable to afford a television set and probably wouldn’t have had time to watch it if she had acquired one. At those times, when she was washing dishes, or trying to make her measly income stretch to her massive bills, the ever present music was soothing. She’d come home from work and it would greet her like an old friend, making returning to her tiny little dark apartment seem a little more welcoming.

  Other times it was completely irritating. Whoever had put on the song would play it at full blast, a setting so loud that Abby was certain she could see the already chipped paint, peeling off the ceiling in flecks at every swelling crescendo. And it was always that same song, just the one, over and over that somehow seemed to worm its way into her brain and take up residence so that even when she wasn’t home, a constant phantom soundtrack followed her around. Noelle had even caught her humming it at work a few times and eventually felt compelled to quite seriously tell her to stop.

  Abby flopped over in bed for what was quite certainly the millionth time that night and buried her head under her pillow, quite a bit like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand.

  “It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning,” she said much too loudly to no one. “There is no less appropriate time to be blasting classical music than right now.”

  Abby would be the first to admit that she was letting her rude neighbor grate on her nerves a bit too heavily that evening. The truth of the matter was that her righteous irritation was a good distraction from the self-recriminating feelings she’d been carrying around all week. She had messed up. Again.

  After finishing up on that one particularly busy night at the Home Sweet, she had come home and immediately dumped out the contents of her apron on the kitchen table. She found the address Noelle had given her for the commercial audition and immediately pinned it to her fridge with a smiley face magnet. Then she’d counted up her tips, a personal best, and immediately put it in an envelope for Len, her landlord. She was already two days behind on rent and she hoped paying in cash would soothe his irritation.

  It wasn’t until all that was taken care of that Abby had noticed something was missing. She looked at every free inch of her tiny kitchen table and then inspected each crevice of her apron pocket. Finally she’d gotten down on all fours and checked the kitchen floor and under the refrigerator but it was no use. She had lost William's note, she realized, and she could not for the life of her remember the phone number he had jotted down.

  Abby had consulted a phone book and even tried an internet search but William Harrow was too common of a name and she had no further information to go on. She had actually gone so far as to ask Aaron if William had paid with a credit card that night at the restaurant, hoping to glean some information from that, but he had not.

  It’s not meant to be, she told herself finally, though she’d been almost close to tears at that point, so great was her hopeless frustration.

  Abby had believed it meant something that their paths kept crossing so serendipitously. She did not believe in accidents of fate but now she had to admit that there was a lesson she was supposed to be learning from their near misses. Her apron, after all, had two slips of important paper in it but she had only lost one.

  Getting boys’ phone numbers had not been what she had come to New York for, no matter how excited and giddy it made her feel. She’d come to pursue her passion for acting and performing, to fulfill her dreams, to finally stand before a crowded audience, move them to tears or laughter or whatever the script called for. Admittedly between working at the restaurant and meeting William and nursing her childish homesickness, she had been losing sight of that. This, she realized lying sleepless in her bed, was her wake up call.

  Through the thin wall she heard the classical song meet its grand pinnacle, then end. Not two seconds later it began again. This time though, it sounded louder, if at all possible.

  “Surely this is a form of torture,” Abby said.

  Suddenly energized, she sat bolt upright in bed. The music played on. Not giving herself a chance to rethink the action, she climbed out of bed and into her slippers. She pulled on her robe though the night was too hot for it, and ran a cursory hand through her tied back hair hoping she looked halfway decent and not as crazed as she felt.

  Before she knew it she had stomped out into the hallway and was standing in front of her next door neighbor’s door. In the last few weeks, she had only seen the other people on the eighth floor in passing or far too up close
in the cramped little elevator. In South Meadow, a welcome committee would have bombarded a newcomer with pie and well wishes by now. But Abby only knew her apartment neighbors as “the guy across the hall that goes down to the lobby to get his mail wearing only a towel” and “the lady at the end of the hall who overcooked an egg and set the smoke detectors off.” She had never met this particular neighbor but that was not going to keep her from giving them a polite but stern telling off.

  Using her pent up frustration as momentum, Abby knocked fiercely on the door; and instantly regretted it. Suddenly her heightened indignation gave way to doubt. What if this neighbor was a crazy kidnapper who lured young women into his apartment with pretty albeit annoying music? Worse still, what if the neighbor she had come to yell at was a sweet old lady who was just a bit hard of hearing?

  Abby glanced back at her own open apartment door, wondering if she could sneak back in unnoticed and pretend the whole thing had never happened. But suddenly with an unceremonious squeak, the door in front of her was opening.