Better Nate Than Ever

by Federle, Tim

  “So, I should pay for all this,” I say, following him to a cash register, where a young girl is smacking bubble gum and filing her nails.

  (She’s supernice, by the way, and even gives me a free plastic bag in which to store my original, dripping outfit.)

  Back out the door, the sun is set to full blast, lighting the streets a shimmering slick. It’s ten to ten, and I need to get to the Ripley-Grier Studios, now just a block away.

  • Bookbag: check.

  • Libby’s mystery manila envelope: check; damp, but check.

  • Old clothes, the old me, bunched up in plastic bag, stuffed into bookbag (had to throw out one clean pair of underwear to make room, but must be smart about space): check.

  • Dead Nokia: check.

  • Most important, all remaining donuts intact: check.

  I scan the addresses from across the street, walking past a comfortingly familiar White Castle, and then cross with a clump of folks who don’t seem to be minding the Walk/Don’t Walk signs at all. I love it here: the people rule the traffic, and cars must stop and—oh, wait, that Honda almost killed that lady. Okay. I’ve still got things to learn.

  And here it is.

  Ripley-Grier!

  Huh.

  Different than I’d imagined in my bus ride mind-movie of the day to come. Ripley-Grier appears to just be an office building, just a simple office building. The kind that other kids’ dads, the ones with real jobs, would probably work in and make their families a lot of money.

  I walk through a shiny-floored lobby, aware suddenly of how slippery and cumbersome my new purple Adidas high-tops are, and step up to a security guard. Here goes literally everything.

  “I am here for E.T.: The Broadway Musical Version, sir.” My voice is jittery, or I am.

  “Which floor?”

  “Which floor?” I repeat back at him. “The floor with E.T.: The flipping Broadway Musical Version on it,” I want to say.

  “Yes. Which floor y’visiting?” Perhaps he is being hostile with me because of my outfit. It does appear as if I could smuggle drugs or a small town away in my shirt.

  “Oh, the Ripley-Grier Studios floor, sir.”

  “Sixteenth Floor. Smile for the camera,” and he takes my photo. Wait: Is he taking my . . . headshot?

  “Can I have that photo?” I say to him. “I’ve got a few dollars left, and I could—”

  “This is just for our terrorist database, kid,” he says, tipping his head in the direction of an elevator bank.

  And this is the moment I realize the surrounding lobby is awash with a million other boys, all of whom look just like me but in clothes that fit them and are defined by primary colors and stripes. Things regular kids actually wear, and not anything like the tarp I’ve got on. “Anyone want to go camping,” I think to call out. “You provide the kerosene and I’ve got the sleeping arrangements all worked out.”

  I board the elevator and press 16, crushed into the corner by a group of kids and their moms getting on behind me.

  “Let me see your teeth,” one of the moms barks to her son, a boy whose hair is parted so aggressively, I could probably see his thoughts if I stared into it hard enough. He bares his gums, revealing perfect, peppermint-Orbit-white teeth, and his mom licks both her thumbs and smooths back his eyebrows.

  “What do you say if they ask how old you are?” she says to him, a little softer.

  He smiles those peppermint-Orbit-white nightmares and says, “However old you need the character Elliott to be.”

  And I realize this audition is going to be a harder game than I’d anticipated.

  Black and White to Color

  The doors part, and suddenly the relative quiet of a small enclosed box is broken by what sounds like a circus, an actual three-ring circus with popcorn sellers and scar-faced boys and women who ride elephants without seat belts, such is the tremendous noise.

  It’s like no place I’ve ever been in Pittsburgh.

  It’s the kind of place I’d actually pay money to come and just people watch, back home. If some future Noah decides to include every stripe of person on his ark, and not just zebras and whatnot, he’d do a good job popping by this elevator exit ramp and loading up a few of these weirdos.

  A blazing TV monitor announces what’s happening in which studios: Gypsy in Studio F; Phantom in Studio C; Carousel auditions in Studio J. It’s . . . incredible.

  Wait: Phantom’s still running? Whoa.

  Not that I need a room number to know where I’m heading; it’s clear all us kids are here for the same reason, and just like at Port Authority, I lean back and get swept along to the E.T. studio.

  And I see him.

  Jordan Rylance.

  Libby’s Facebook friend. From when she went to the Performing Arts School with him, in downtown Pittsburgh, before her mom got sick and they had to move back to Jankburg. Before Libby helped me learn everything I know about life and love and lozenges.

  Here he is.

  As I round the corner, past a Vitamin Water dispenser and a series of small practice rooms, Jordan Rylance is sitting in a chair, a perfect binder of music placed perfectly on his perfect lap. At first I think he’s severely underdressed, that I wasn’t the only idiot who showed up looking like one today. But then I recognize his genius move, something I’d never’ve thought of.

  He’s in a red hoodie.

  Just like Elliott in the movie. And jeans more normal than mine, and sneakers that look like Hollywood sneakers playing the part of sneakers: perfect bow-laces and perfect white edges and perfect uncreased tongues. And he doesn’t look wet at all, like he avoided the last hour’s rain entirely. Jordan probably has parents who paid for a hotel next door, a hotel with a connecting walkway that led him directly to the audition.

  “Mommy,” I watch him whisper, waving a thermos in the air, “my water isn’t hot anymore.”

  His Mommy jumps up, dropping a weird leopard-print coat behind (presumably to mark the territory as her own), racing away with Jordan’s water canister. I fumble for my own bottle and take a sip.

  It’s time to get hydrated and get serious.

  “Do I know you?” Jordan says, and I realize I’m staring at him, that my wide-eyed scanning of the last hour has finally met an audience who is looking back.

  “Oh sorry, I—”

  Twin girls bump past me, and I turn to survey a Broadway audition studio teeming with a grab bag of multicultured children, black and white and red and tan. Many of the girls are practicing their splits, and a boy is posed on a skateboard, and two other boys are juggling balls back and forth.

  “Do we have to juggle for this audition?” I say to Jordan suddenly. What am I doing here?

  His Mommy returns, holding that boiling thermos of Jordan-water, and snaps to me: “Can I help you?” But not in an “I want to help you” way, like, at all.

  “Oh, I was just”—I straighten up and drop my bookbag, by now pulling my shoulder into an ache—“wondering if we had to juggle for this audition. Or do the splits. I just see a lot of kids—”

  “Well, Jordan is on vocal rest,” his Mommy says, squeezing a packet of honey, pulled from her purse, into his water. There appear to be several lemons, as well, in that purse, and a whole mess of lozenges.

  I’ve got lozenges too, I think to myself, and I don’t even have to deal with an overbearing mom.

  “What’s vocal rest?” I say, and Jordan pipes up, breaking some rule I’m sure, and says, “I’m sorry, do we know you?”

  “Well, you’re Jordan Rylance, right? I’m N-n-nate F-f-foster”—pull it together, Nate—“and I go to General Thomas Junior High, across town, and—”

  The very mention of my lower-income school makes Mrs. Rylance go white, like I’d robbed their house or poisoned their poodle (they’re so obviously the type of family with a poodle, probably named Killer or something cutesy).

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you,” Jordan says, reaching out his hand. I shake it, and when he pu
lls away, his mother—her eyes still locked on me—unsnaps a keychain-Purell and vigorously douses Jordan in it, practically giving him an entire hospital bath.

  “Jordan, baby,” she says. “Shh. Save it for the audition.” She brightens her face. Artificially. “So, what are you singing, Nate?”

  “Oh, gosh, probably ‘Bigger Isn’t Better’ from the Broadway musical Barnum.”

  “I love that song,” Jordan says. “I used to sing that song when I was a kid.”

  His mother stands up and says to me, like I was caught teasing Killer the poodle, “Okay! Have you signed in yet? You should sign in, because they’re very backlogged and we wouldn’t want you to miss your spot,” and literally turns me around and gives me a teeny shove toward a young woman behind a table in the far corner of the hallway.

  “I’ll see you later, Jordan,” I call back, pushing through the canopy of children—what if there were a fire or something?—into my place in line.

  I see the important young blonde woman behind the check-in table talking to the mother of the girls who bumped past me before. “Are they twins?” the blonde woman says. “They’re so cute.” And their mom has the nerve to say, “Are you looking for twins for the play?” and the young woman says, “Oh, I don’t know, I’m just an assistant in the casting office.”

  There is so much to be confused about here.

  A small tree, something that looks native to the palm family, sprouts from behind the woman, distracting me further: Do palm trees grow in New York? Is this a land where anything is possible, even tropical indoor plants? And are girls even allowed at an audition for the character Elliott?

  When I finally reach the front of the sign-up line, the juggling brothers have tossed a ball into a framed show poster of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and it crashes to the floor, scattering glass everywhere. The non-twin girls shriek, and the blonde casting assistant woman leaps up, and maybe I should just go. Maybe this is a perfect moment to pick up my bookbag and march back to Port Authority and just write the whole endeavor off as an exploration of New York City and nothing more. A scouting mission toward a future trip.

  But then a janitor (sorry, Dad: a maintenance engineer) appears with a clean-up container and a broom. One of the juggling brothers kind of laughs at the janitor’s exposed butt crack, and my face goes hot. Nobody dreams of being a janitor. Nobody grows up hoping to become a maintenance engineer.

  “Hi, there,” the casting assistant woman says. Oh my God, it’s my turn. Her face is shiny and warm, but dotted with those same warp-speed darting eyes all the people here have. It’s like everyone in New York is afraid they’re going to be caught cheating at poker. “Are you here for the audition?”

  “Yes. And I can’t believe the A train is running local today,” I say, trying out Libby’s catchphrase on my first adult.

  “Okay,” the casting woman says, laughing, handing me a clipboard and a pen. For a moment I think she’s asking for my autograph, and I panic, wondering which signature I’ll use: the one with all lowercase letters that connect, so the e of Nate loops into the f of Foster; or the one where I sign it like a cross, Nate going left to right, Foster coming down on the page like a crossword. Sharing the e for Foster, I mean. Not to be complicated.

  But it’s just a form that she’s handing me, like at a dental office. And that never goes well for me.

  “I’ll just need you to fill out this sheet, and have your mom or dad or guardian sign it. Assuming,” she says, tapping my hand with a pen like we’re best friends studying for a test, “you’re under eighteen.” She winks. No adult has ever winked at me, other than the science teacher in elementary school who had the neurological condition.

  “Sure, sure,” I say. But then I start sweating straight through my billowy new shirt, and could probably use an official moment alone with my deodorant. Mom or Dad or a guardian’s signature. This is a disaster. After pulling off one of the great suburban escapes of all time, I’m getting sidelined on a technicality. (It’s like at the Olympics, when after a million years of training, some high diver accidentally has a poppy-seed muffin and can’t compete because his pee test looks like he’s had drugs or whatever. Anthony told me about this phenomenon once, when he was beating me up.)

  I retreat to a small hallway alcove, imagining backup scenarios. I could ask perfect Jordan Rylance’s mom to cover for me, to sign as my guardian. But she would probably take the opportunity to pull a matchbook from her purse (in addition to lemons and honey, I’m sure she carries matches, just in case little Jordan also needs a cigarette to calm down before an audition). She’d light my application on fire, cackling like a mad witch. Maybe I’ll go as her for Halloween.

  Who are you dressed as? Libby would say, still trying to cheer me up from this disastrous New York mission that will end as well as my family’s trip to Magic Kingdom did. Some kind of suburban housewife? I’d be in a Mrs. Rylance wig and would turn to Libby and say, A suburban house witch, actually, who drives her son to auditions and then burns the other boys’ applications. My costume would be her horrible wig-hair and a purse full of fruits and matches, and honey packets, and a general demeanor of bloodthirsty competition.

  Okay, so I won’t ask Mrs. Rylance to cover for me.

  The audition application is otherwise so simple, taking care of my lost résumé and everything. I wonder if I can list Libby as an acting teacher: We’ve drilled my Brighton Beach Memoirs scene-work so deep into the ground, I could practically do a one-man tour of it, dripping in found oil.

  Not that I’m old enough to play the part of Eugene. I’m never old enough for anything.

  And that’s when I get the idea. The best idea ever.

  NAME: Anthony Foster

  AGE: 21

  HEIGHT: four foot eight (it’s genetic)

  WEIGHT: not sure, happy to stand on scale or call doctor back home; need Nokia phone charger if the latter is necessary

  RELEVANT PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

  I played a piece of broccoli and understudied the legumes in a local pre-professional production of “Vegetables: Just Do It.”

  YEARS OF VOCAL TRAINING, AND TEACHER:

  2 years and 3 months, teacher: Libby Ann Jones

  DANCE TRAINING? 2 years and 3 months, Libby Ann Jones

  ACTING TRAINING? 2 years and 3 months, Libby Ann Jones

  STUDIO:

  Studio?

  “Excuse me,” I say to a very pretty African American girl in a wool skirt. “Do you know what this means? ‘Studio’? On the audition application form?”

  She shakes her head, and I see that she’s polishing a flute.

  Is anyone else here just a regular schlub from the back roads of Pennsylvania, dressed as a hip-hop artist, who not only doesn’t play a flute, or juggle, but sometimes has a hard time keeping his balance tying his shoes if he’s had too much dessert?

  “‘Studio’ just means the dance studio you attend,” a guy says, an uncle type with a helpful vibe. “For instance,” he continues, and I see that he’s in some kind of jazz sneaker, “I run a performing arts studio in Florida, for gifted children. Like my nephew, Shawn.”

  Shawn appears from behind his uncle, dressed in the identical outfit (pleated khakis; pleated hair; pleated Polo).

  “And so Shawn would list my studio, the Robert Poppins School of Performing Arts, under that column on the application. Shawn, tell this boy how many pirouette turns you can do.”

  “Eighteen in tap shoes,” Shawn says, with one strange, lazy eye distracting me, “and six in jazz flats.”

  “But he did nine in jazz flats at the competition in Virginia Beach, didn’t you Shawn?”

  “Well, technically I spun on my heel. I did most of the turn on my heel and not full relevé. Not on my toes like you coached me to, Uncle Robert.”

  Uncle Robert shakes his head at Shawn and says, “Not if they ask, you didn’t, Shawn. If they ask in the audition, you take the average of both your turns—eighteen in tap shoes and nine in flats�
�and you just tell them you’re able to do thirteen at a moment’s notice.”

  “What if they ask me at that very moment, when I’m done auditioning?” Shawn is eyeing a big wooden door where we must be going to get judged. “What if I get in there and they ask me to do thirteen pirouettes?” He appears as nervous as me, which is amazing, since he can do an average of thirteen pirouettes, no matter the shoe, and I wasn’t even sure what a pirouette was all these years. Every time Libby mentioned it, in passing, I thought she was mentioning a special kind of pastry that Broadway people ate in the green room before going onstage.

  “They won’t ask you that, Shawn,” Uncle Robert says, his fake-red hair glowing something purple in the wash of sun streaming through a far window, “because they wouldn’t want to intimidate the other children at the first round of auditions. And I can’t imagine ‘Elliott’ has to do thirteen pirouettes, anyway. It’s E.T., for crying out loud, not Firebird.” Uncle Robert directs his attention to me. “A lot of people don’t realize that children at a studio like mine can already perform more difficult tricks than many, many Broadway professionals can. Even adults. Isn’t that right, Shawn?”

  But Shawn’s lazy eye has reached its limit, dropping entirely to the bottom of his socket, and he nods off for a second and then pops his head up, disoriented, beginning the whole trick again. Uncle Robert hands him a PowerBar.

  That wooden door from across the hall opens, and a large man—not fat exactly, but just bursting with life, with long flowy hair and a long flowy shirt and a long flowy face—walks up to the blonde assistant woman with the shiny face, and they whisper. She stands and claps her hands, not in a fun cheerleader way but like she’s already mad at all of us for something.

  “Listen up, please,” she says, and the hallway is instantly quiet. I watch Mrs. Rylance cross her legs and pat Jordan on the knee, and he’s smiling so hard I think he actually splits a corner of his mouth open. “We are about to see the first fifty children,” casting assistant woman continues, “and the cutoff today is three hundred. Please look at your application, if you haven’t turned it in, and make note of your number.”