Alice in La La Land

by Sophie Lee

  'Don't be petty, Alice. It doesn't suit you,' he snapped. He ran his hands over his crop. 'Sorry, Alice, this is embarrassing and it wasn't my fuck-up. If you look, you'll see it's a great character role. That's what you do best, Alice. Come on.'

  Alice's mind was racing and her lips were numb. She felt herself nodding and smiling, which was odd considering she felt like throwing up. She desperately needed air.

  'Alice, just read the script again,' he urged, sitting down and dragging his chair close to her. 'You'll see what an intriguing role it is. You could do so much with it. Can you do that for me?'

  'I will do that,' she agreed slowly, but could feel something inside her rising unstoppably. She looked him in the eye and took a deep breath, willing herself to be calm. 'Not only will I read it,' she exhaled, 'but I will learn it, I will do the audition and I will do my very best to win it.' She paused for another breath while blood rushed in her eardrums. 'But you need to know, Conrad. We – you – still owe my family money. My dad needs ten thousand dollars back for this . . . this operation. Do you understand what I'm saying?' Alice could feel tears in her eyes and willed herself to maintain control. This was a business meeting, after all.

  Conrad leaned forward and put his hands on her shoulders. 'Ally-shenally,' he soothed, reverting to his old pet name for her, 'of course I understand.' Alice sagged under the weight of his hands. 'That's why I'm here. I've been trying to recoup that money since Vienna. That's what I'm trying to tell you. When you get the part of Colleen, I'm going to insist they finesse the deal and up your wage. Maybe double it. And if possible, I'm going to try to cut you in on a back-end deal. With your dad's health at stake, it's more important than ever.' Conrad reached forward and touched her mouth lightly with his finger. 'The producers love me and they will be guided by my decisions. Trust me, Alice, my solution is perfect. Now go home and start working on your audition. I'll make sure you have one of the first appointment times tomorrow and we'll take it from there. I'm going to do everything I can to get your international career in play.'

  Alice maintained her gaze and slowly nodded her head. She had to trust what he was saying. 'Okay. That's a deal, Conrad,' she said finally. 'I'll be there tomorrow. Thanks for the meeting.' She stood up, collected her bag and walked out of his hotel suite without another word.

  Alice wandered slowly towards the lift as if in a dream. She stepped inside and could feel her nose begin to run. She stabbed at the close-doors button and the lift began its descent. Alice willed herself to hang onto the lump in her throat and not to lose it in front of the snippy valet attendant.

  On the first floor, the lift doors opened and Alice was relieved to note that she had forced her breathing to return to normal. A woman stood poised to step into the lift. Alice did a double-take. Celestia Bannow stood resplendent in crimson lipstick with her ethereal hair spilling out from under a navy beret.

  'Alice!' she trilled delightedly. 'How are you?' She shook her head from side to side in amazement. Her clear green eyes shone as though she'd just awoken from the most wonderful sleep. 'I never thought I'd see you here.'

  11

  But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of

  tears, until there was a large pool all around her.

  Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

  Alice was quite sure her nose was red. Her throat felt as though it was on fire. She ruffled her hair vigorously but quickly stopped, knowing how oddly frantic it must seem.

  Celestia graciously stepped aside and let the lift doors close. Alice swallowed the lump in her throat and forced herself to speak. 'Well, I haven't been here all that long, Celestia, but with Cornucopia coming out soon, I thought that I should have a sniff around LA.'

  'Cornucopia?' Celestia asked. 'But didn't they shoot that film three years ago?'

  'Two. They were saving it for Venice. It had an amazing response, you know,' Alice reached in her bag for a tissue. 'You know how it is.'

  Alice was babbling. Celestia had that effect on her. She was the type of person who would initiate protracted silences that made you jump in and fill them with inane chatter. 'And you? Have you been here long?' asked Alice. Her voice sounded both high and shrill in her own ears.

  'Oh, I'm back and forth all the time,' said Celestia airily.

  Alice had to hand it to her. She didn't gloat about her conquests. But somehow the lack of information she provided made her position seem that much more potent.

  Alice suddenly felt she desperately needed to know exactly what Celestia had lined up. They were the same age and had been working in the industry for as long as each other.

  'What's happening for you this trip, then?' Alice persisted.

  'There's a Woody Allen film, you know, a little ensemble piece,' she said lightly. 'But, hey, I'm going up to meet with Conrad about his new film right now. Is that what you . . .?' She cut the sentence short, suddenly remembering that Alice and Conrad had been a couple. For a moment, her serene expression became rigid.

  'Yes,' said Alice quickly. 'He's doing so well, isn't he? It's a great script,' she laughed.

  'You know, Alice, you remind me a bit of Maisie,' said Celestia benevolently, the serene mask firmly back in place.

  Alice wasn't sure if this was a compliment or not. It could well have been an insult. Celestia shook her hair from under the beret. It cascaded like waves of caramel and made Alice irrationally hungry for sweets. Celestia didn't seem the slightest bit threatened. Perhaps she thought so little of Alice's work that Alice did not pose a threat. Celestia had the sort of temperament best suited to the job: superior, gracious and impenetrable.

  'Really? Well, thanks, I guess,' Alice replied, fumbling for her valet ticket. 'Anyway, you know how it is. I've gotta run to the next thing. Best of luck with it.'

  Celestia smiled benevolently and pushed the lift button, satisfied their conversation had come to its conclusion. 'Bye, Alice. So nice to see you,' she said as the lift doors opened. She stepped inside and gave Alice a tiny wave with two fingers, like the queen.

  Alice ran down the stairs to the carpark and handed the valet her parking ticket. She had to use her credit card to cover the fee.

  She drove down the Santa Monica Freeway and kept on going until she got to the Pacific Ocean. She was aware of the tears sliding down her cheeks and dripping off her chin but did nothing to wipe them away. Her throat was burning and her nose ran continuously.

  The night Conrad left, Alice had lain on the wooden floor of their terrace bedroom and cried an actual pool of tears that formed beside her face on the floor. She remained where she was until the first buses started roaring at 6.00 am.

  That day, Alice could not bear to stay in their home, and desperate with lack of sleep, checked herself into a Quality Inn in Maroubra. She wasn't sure how she ended up three suburbs away; it was as though her car was on auto pilot. She caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror and wondered if they would accept her as a motel guest. Traces of black eye makeup had lined her cheeks and resembled spidery tattoos. Her pallor was greyish-white and her eyelids puffy. Her whole face looked swollen. In fact, she looked like she'd just been in a car accident.

  Alice handed her credit card to the receptionist – who greeted her with raised eyebrows – and took the key. Whether it was in response to Alice's appearance or to the fact that she had no luggage, Alice was not sure. Once admitted, she took the lift to the third floor above the motel courtyard. Even though it was already a warm day, Alice lay shivering under a blanket on the bed listening to an Austrian brass band serenade a lunchtime gathering.

  The room was decorated in office-like hues of blue and grey and the carpet was brown. A framed beach print on the wall was mounted above a small desk with a broken lamp. Alice could feel herself turning in ever-deepening spirals, like a time-travelling troll. The combined effect of brass band music, the smell of the motel carpet and the knowledge that she would have to be onstage that evening was too much to bear alone. After ha
lf an hour, Alice picked up the phone in desperation and called Flick.

  Once she'd told Flick her whereabouts, she returned to her supine position under the blanket and stared at the wall until her friend arrived.

  'You cannot stay here a moment longer,' Flick declared, storming in and gathering Alice's few possessions. Flick had to explain to the woman at reception that Alice Evans would no longer be needing room 308 and asked if it were possible that she not be charged for it. The woman looked sympathetically from Alice to Flick and agreed.

  Flick took Alice to her one-bedroom flat in Annandale and forced her to eat spicy takeaway Thai soup and hum ancient Mayan chants. She even drove her to the theatre that night to make sure that she was okay. 'My dear, you'll be fine. Hortense Apostolou was able to go on in the throes of a hernia, so I'm sure you'll manage through a minor nervous breakdown.'

  She was right, Doctor Theatre prevailed and Alice was able to postpone her unravelling until after the performance, at which point Flick was waiting out the front to take her to Chinatown. Flick insisted that Asian food was a cure for all ills.

  At BBQ King, they ordered the half duck. It arrived Peking-style with pancakes and plum sauce, and was followed by sang choi bau. Alice and Flick ordered Chinese beer as well as a pot of Chinese tea.

  'Best to keep our fluids up,' Flick advised sagely, necking the beer bottle.

  Now that the evening's performance was behind her, Alice's voice had become curiously flat and sounded broken. 'Why would he just go without seeing the show through, making sure we could repay the investors? Why would he disappear without saying goodbye to me, or at least formally breaking up with me, Flick?'

  The duck pancakes arrived with cucumber, spring onion and crunchy prawn crackers and they began to roll them into saucy bite-sized parcels. Flick watched Alice devour one and immediately begin rolling another. 'Thank God you've still got your appetite,' she noted. 'The day you go off your food I'll know things are really bad.'

  Flick popped a pancake in her mouth. 'Alice,' she cautioned, 'I think there was stuff going on with Conrad that you weren't aware of. You didn't know about the Vienna position until I told you. Maybe there were other things he was keeping secret as well.'

  Alice gulped down the large mouthful of Peking duck and dabbed at a bit of plum sauce on her sleeve. 'Do you know something else?' she queried, feeling the beginnings of a headache. She took a swig of beer to quell her nerves.

  'No,' Flick sighed, 'I don't, but I'm just saying that if he kept that a secret then maybe there were other things he didn't have the courage to tell you about as well.' She reached for her second pancake and took a dainty bite. 'He certainly hasn't behaved in a courageous or chivalrous manner,' she observed.

  Alice raised her bottle and clinked it against Flick's, which was still on the table. It fell over and Flick rescued it before the contents spilled over them.

  'To courage and bravery, wherever it may be,' Alice proposed, and started on her final pancake. 'Maybe soon it's time I went to LA,' she mused, through another mouthful. 'Even if Conrad says the real films only come out of Europe.'

  With Conrad gone, Alice could not afford to pay the rent on their Paddington terrace. She was forced to forfeit the lease and move out. Alice returned to Flick's couch until the play's run was over, sold her car and put the bulk of her things in storage. Due to small houses and appalling reviews, the run was cut short. While it was a relief not to have to perform anymore, Alice was left with the pressing matter of repaying investors. She and Conrad owed her parents the princely sum of twenty thousand dollars. It was money they should never have accepted, as Alice's parents could ill-afford to lose it.

  It was a hot February when Alice returned to Wollongong. The days were cool in Keiraville before the sun rose, but soon after, Alice would hear the cicadas whirr into life, chirping an incantation to the burgeoning heat. Each morning, Alice would force herself to walk around the soccer oval at the edge of their suburb. It was flanked by a national park on one side and a dilapidated children's playground on the other. Alice put one foot in front of the other and trudged around the oval three times. It wasn't really exercising so much as a method to navigate the early hours of the day.

  Her parents welcomed her with open arms, but they had developed routines and systems that no longer allowed for her presence. She was like a once-integral cog in a machine. The machine had somehow managed to work in her absence with a rubber-band, and the cog was now rendered obsolete.

  The Evans family home stood snugly at the end of a cul-de-sac above a gully off the Illawarra escarpment. It was a '70s-style split-level timber home with little private space. A large primary-coloured rug still sat in the centre of the living room, and the bookshelves were crammed with framed photos of Alice and her brother, Jasper. The bedroom on the top level had belonged to him, but he had departed long ago. He now lived in Canberra and made his living in the armed forces. His bedroom had become a storage facility for the children's memorabilia, Alice's press clippings and theatre posters, her father's bowls equipment and her mother's parish correspondence.

  On the lower level, Alice's room had been converted into an office, and a computer and office furniture had to be re-shuffled to accommodate her. The bedroom was only slightly larger than the single foldout bed that she would collapse and put away each morning when she awoke for her walk. She could still remember what had adorned the room's walls when she was very small: alphabet wallpaper with tigers and elephants and the animal mobile her father had hung for her. Alice could recall staring at the timber cupboards at the end of the bed, endlessly puzzling at the wood-grain patterns on the doors and imagining faces and shapes within the markings. If she stared at the patterns for long enough, they would draw her into another world of waves and lines, of depths and dizzying sensations.

  Alice's father was enjoying his retirement by indulging in a variety of hobbies, most of which demanded skills he did not have. The tropical fish died, it seemed, at weekly intervals, and his orchids did not flourish. The occupation at which he shone was embroidery, an unexpected bent for an ex-train driver. Ken sat on the verandah in the cool of the evening with a Tooheys draught by his side, stitching intricate patterns on checked cloth.

  On hot evenings they would sit together on the verandah, as they had done when Alice was a child. Alice kept the insect repellent by her fold-out chair, beside her glass of shandy.

  'You'll be all right, blossom,' her dad reassured her. 'I promise you something unexpected will come from this and you'll be grateful things happened the way they did. Wait and see.' Her dad's eyes shone in the glow of the single bulb on the exterior wall. Crickets chirped loudly. The cicadas had retired for the evening.

  'Grateful? To be dumped by my boyfriend and on the list of the long-term unemployed? Oh, Dad, how can you say that?' Alice sighed.

  'I just know,' he replied calmly, shaking his head and stitching with white cotton. 'Call it father's insight.'

  'Never heard of it,' Alice laughed. 'Mother's intuition, sure, father's insight? I'm dubious.'

  'God, the mozzies are a bastard tonight. Can you pass me that green cotton?'

  'You need your specs, Dad, it's right there in your lap,' Alice pointed out.

  Mr and Mrs Evans' bedtime rituals began around 8.30 pm and lights were out an hour later. This suited Alice fine. She had a metal bedside lamp and enjoyed immersing herself in crime novels for a good hour before she went to sleep. It took her mind off other things. On Sunday nights, after they returned from Mass at the local Catholic church, the family would gather around the television and watch a quality drama on the ABC, a small glass of sherry by each one's side. Ken liked to poke fun at the other church ladies, and to pull apart Father O'Riley's sermon. Alice wondered whether he actually believed in God or if he went to Mass to keep her mum off his back.

  After a week at home, Alice realised her financial matters were in dire shape and she needed to take immediate action. She called Bunny Gange. After suff
ering the inevitable I-told-you-to-do-the-American-pilot lecture, Alice implored Bunny to help her get any job possible, no matter how lowly. After a stint in a corporate video for the National Bank playing a disgruntled bank teller, Alice was two thousand dollars better off. But the fee went instantly to her parents, after which she was left to find the other eight she owed, plus money for her living expenses.

  The day Alice donned the pink uniform and white lace up shoes, it was shaping up to be thirty-six degrees celsius. The zipper at the front of the dress poked into her already sweaty middle. Alice caught the bus at 6.20 am for a 7 am start.

  The West Wollongong Tasty-Time Cake Shop was a twenty-minute bus-ride from Keiraville. It was owned and run by the Evans' next-door neighbours. Alice had worked part-time at the cake shop as a high school student at St Mary Star of the Sea. The shop stood in the West Wollongong Arcade, opposite a Tandy electronics store and next to an unfrequented Chinese fruit market.

  Alice's first task was to slice bread in a large metal slicer. Once she'd bagged the sliced loaves and lined the shelves with bread, she fetched the cakes from the racks in the bakery at the back of the premises. By 7 am, most of the bakers had finished their shifts and only her boss remained.

  Peter Burgess was a kind, softly spoken man in his early fifties with two grown daughters. His full head of brown hair was usually dusted with flour, giving the impression of premature grey above his tanned face. His daily uniform consisted of white shorts, white T-shirt and white running shoes. Alice had never once heard him complain about having to get up at 3 am to start his shift. In Alice's recollection, his blue eyes had never shown signs of ill temper.

  'You right, Al? Got everything you need there?'

  Peter was happy to provide work for Alice, and made little mention of her acting career or lack thereof. It was as if he knew that coming back to work for him was humble pie for the girl who had declared to all that acting was her destiny and that failure was not on her agenda.