by Federle, Tim
“Nate!” And here she is. “They are boarding your bus and you need to get on, now.”
“Ten dollars,” the man says, holding out his hand, but Heidi yells, “Now!” again, and I unplug my phone and shove it into my pocket (barely; God these jeans are tight). Forget ten bucks. I’m down to single dollars at this point, and I apologize and shuffle back to the line.
I’m the worst friend Libby ever had, though I have the advantage of being the only one she’s got, too.
“Sorry about that back there, Aunt Heidi,” I say. “I suck.”
“You don’t suck, you just . . . you are really stubborn, for a kid who’s never been outside Pittsburgh.”
“How do you know I’ve never been outside Pittsburgh?” I say.
“Because I know your parents. You’ve probably—what—only been to Disney, am I right?”
“Yes,” I say. Yes, that’s exactly right. The woman in the fur and flip-flops clip-clops by, and I look at her and frown at Aunt Heidi and say, “Well, that was the most exciting and depressing two hours of my life. So: Thank you, for the good parts.”
She smiles. “It was really nice to meet you again, Nate. I—I really wish I could see you more often, but you know.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You wouldn’t want to skip town and visit Pennsylvania and miss any shifts at Aw Shucks.” She rolls her eyes and holds back a grin. “In case they name a brunch special after you, or something.”
“We’re shutting these doors, kid,” a man calls out from behind us. “Are you on this bus or not?”
“We don’t serve brunch,” Heidi says, quietly, and gives me a hug, a real one. And just a second later, when she pulls away, her eyes are fully wet, like two of the three rivers that converge at one point in downtown Pittsburgh. And I’d better get on that bus if I want to make it back to Jankburg by nightfall.
Though I’ve forgotten a single reason to want to make it back to Jankburg by nightfall. Or anyfall.
“Bye, Aunt Heidi,” I say, tugging my bookbag across the linoleum, waving. “Thanks for the ticket back. And the clothes.”
The door shuts, and I’m the very last person on, which always quickens my pulse. When I’m last on the bus back home, nobody offers to let me sit next to him. I always have to walk with my head down, as quiet as possible, until I find the one kid who’s asleep, or a reject himself, and even then I sit with as little of my butt as possible on the very smallest sliver of the very edge of the bus seat, so as not to wake my bus-seat partner.
Here at the Port Authority, I’ve got the advantage of being the smallest person here and the least crazy. A new reason to like New York, all over again—the people may be faster and taller and jugglier and more successful than back home, but it’s clear that they’re also crazier.
That to immerse myself in their groupings is to emerge the most normal, as well.
I finally decide between the two remaining seats: one next to a regular-enough-looking guy doing a crossword puzzle, but with a giant, Nate-size suitcase placed square atop the seat next to him; or another, next to a grown woman with braids and a doll in her lap, certifiably nuts.
“Would you mind if I sat next to you, sir?”
The crossword guy moves the suitcase to the floor, and I slump into my seat and hug my bookbag. I pull out a mini-donut, and then two more, and then I eat four in all and take a final sip from my water bottle, and then, at last, the bus driver hits reverse and we’re off.
And just when I think that the best thing I could do is take a nap, to try my hardest not to cry, to pretend I’m not as wound up as a dreidel (I researched dreidels for the homemade Fiddler on the Roof Playbill I created for Libby’s mom), my phone flashes a blink-blink sound, barely alive from its two minutes of juicing back at the Port Authority kiosk.
I pull it open and, amid the five-thousand logged text messages from Libby and one from Anthony (“You’re dead, homo”), an unknown 212 area code has left me a voice mail.
Me.
We break from Port Authority, and the sunlight argues its way through the tinted bus glass, and when I press go on my phone, to listen to the voice mail, this is exactly the message I hear, with _____ signifying the parts that cut out.
“Hi, Anthony, this is _____ from Rex Rollins and Company Casting.”
Possibly I pee a little in my pants, here.
“We believe you were just mistakenly _______ but would like _____ at two p.m., today, back at the Ripley-Grier Studios on _____ sixteen. There will be sides ________ and you will need to _______ should expect _______ no later than four or five but please call us _______ hope _____. And be prepared to show us the knee crawl you talked about at the audition.”
“Driver!” I yell, practically elbowing the poor crossword guy (Four-letter word for second chance: N A T E) next to me. “Stop this vehicle!”
An Outrageous Turn of Events
If I had a pair of scissors, I would use them right now.
Oh, God, not like that. This isn’t a suicide book. God.
I would cut these jeans off at the knee (after ducking into a private phone booth or an alley; nobody in New York needs to know what kind of underwear I wear). (Hanes Boys, by the way, ’cause whaddo I care if you do.) I’d turn these jeans into shorts and pick up my sprint, en route back to the audition.
I know it doesn’t make sense. I know my mom is going to slay me. That Aunt Heidi is heading south (downtown) to Aw Shucks, feeling good about herself, that she finally did something resembling conscientious when it came to her nephew or to any child at all.
But there was a mistake made in New York Manhattan City today.
Of course there was a mistake: Garret Charles is practically a million years old and probably misread my number on the audition clipboard, mixing me up with another child! And I’m back in the game. E.T. could be mine. I could be the next Elliott.
The first Elliott.
With apologies to Henry Thomas from the movie, who is likely ninety years old now, I bet you.
I text Libby just as my cell phone is powering itself down—“stall. do whatever u need 2 do 2 stall. i got a callback”—but who knows if it goes through. Who cares, even? I may never return to Jankburg now, not unless they’re throwing a parade for me.
And I’m out, dashing off the bus, dashing through the terminal, frankly feeling just plain dashing.
There’s time for a few buy-or-die errands before I need to be back at that audition, so I pop back to Montego’s, like I’m a regular, purchasing a pair of relatively normal-size basketball shorts, on sale for a miraculous single dollar. I’m back on the street and debating, hard, about Applebee’s. Aunt Heidi would judge me, but those fajitas are just so darn satisfying. I’m out of dough, besides, and need to replenish my supply. I wonder if Mom has noticed, by now, that her debit card is missing. Usually Dad throws everything on the credit card.
And when I wind my way into a Chase bank—there’s two per street, I’ve noticed, as many Chase banks here as there are Jiffy Lubes and fat people back home—and go to take out a hundred dollars (don’t worry, I’m paying Mom back with my first paycheck from E.T.: The Musical: Now on Broadway Forever), the transaction is denied.
What?
Transaction denied, it says again, when I try a second time. It couldn’t be that I’ve forgotten Mom’s pin number. It’s just Grandma Flora’s birthday, Mom’s pin for everything.
“Breathe, Nate,” I say out loud, but really I want to be yelling, “Moose Murders! Moose Murders it all to tarnation!”
(Moose Murders, the most infamous of all Broadway flops and thus reserved as the most critical curse word in the theatrical curse-word canon, ran for exactly one performance on Broadway. One review described a scene in which “a mummified paraplegic rises from his wheelchair to kick a man dressed as a moose in the crotch,” according to Wikipedia.)
If the Foster clan doesn’t even have a hundred smackers sitting around a crummy Mellon Bank account, not even E.T.: The Musical can rescue our finances. We’re o
fficially Moose Murdered.
I’d plead my case to the bank tellers, maybe even attempting to weep, but I’d probably break into a nervous laugh. Improv is my weakest skill, according to Libby. I am at my best, as a performer, when playing dead or being fake-punched.
And speaking of performing, let’s get on to the audition callback, okay?
You don’t need a hundred bucks to audition for a Broadway show; you just need a lucky break. And you can’t get that at an ATM.
Moving Ahead: I Know Several Portions of Hamlet
“Okay, Anthony Foster”—is this the time to correct them, to finally give my real name?—“you’re next. You’re on deck.”
On deck. This is a term Dad uses with Anthony when they’re talking through baseball stuff. “On deck” and then “at bat” and then “steal home.” Any minute, Mom’ll be wondering when I’m stealing home.
I’m back on the sixteenth floor, the halls now littered not only with us kids auditioning for E.T. but a group of women in body stockings and provocative hairstyles (side ponytails, lots of ’em). A sign outside the door next to E.T. says: “Pole Dancing Class by Charlene: POLE NOT REQUIRED,” with a big smiley face, drawn where the O of “pole dancing” is. A smiley face wearing lipstick. Whoa.
This place is like Disney World for adults.
“Anthony!” Oh, boy. “You’re up.”
Beckany, the ringlet-haired casting assistant whose voice has steadily shredded into a total rasp today, is standing by the door, letting the last child out from her singing audition. The girl isn’t exactly crying but is, rather, stunned, as if she’s just learned the Tooth Fairy is, in fact, her Uncle Brian or something.
We trade places and I’m through the door, chilly in my new shorts.
The room suddenly feels much bigger, the “creative team” way on the other side, behind a large plastic fold-up table. Mom set out exactly this kind of table in the yard, last summer, for the Celebrate Anthony party (it was just a general celebration for all the trophies he’d won that year).
“And this is Anthony Foster,” Beckany says, and when I turn to thank her, she slams the door shut and the lights waver and somebody coughs from behind the desk.
“Hi,” I say, bolted to my place.
“Would you like to come out,” Rex Rollins says, putting down another can of Diet Coke and licking his fingers of, I believe, hot-wing sauce, “and stand on the little black x.” He points to the center of the room.
In the time since I was here this morning, they’ve blocked out the mirrors with a tremendous swath of pink fabric, stretched clear across the room, giving the overall effect that I’m auditioning on a giant tongue.
“Anthony,” Rex says—and I’m still not used to responding to this name; I keep expecting somebody to hand me a trophy—“let me reintroduce you to the team.” He rolls over and takes me by the shoulder, holding on tight like I’m graduating from high school and he’s handing me a diploma. I’m doubtful I’ll ever make it through public school alive, so it’s kind of nice to get this ritual over with now.
“Oh, no need to reintroduce me, Mr. Rollins,” I say, so nervous I can’t believe my own moving mouth. “Marc and Mark are the casting assistants”—the two look up from their iPhones, grinning—“and Monica is Mr. Garret Charles’s assistant”—Monica waves, her legs up on the table, the kind of gal who seems thrilled to be the only girl in the room—“and that, of course, leaves Mr. Garret Charles.” Shut up, Nate, shut up, Nate, shut up, Nate.
“Very impressive, Anthony,” Rex says, laughing so hard—so over the top—that his many chins fold and roll on top of one another, like a big ice cream churner, and threaten to catch my underbite in their tide.
“Oh!” I say, gesturing—put your hand down, Nate. “And let’s not forget Sammy!” Sammy, behind the piano, tips a pretends hat and says, “Thanks, kid.”
This is either going extremely well—like, they’re going to write an entire new role into the show, the Mayor of E.T.’s planet or something, for me—or will go down as one of the great audition disaster stories of all time. Rex Rollins will publish a book: The Kid Who Talked Too Much and Other Cautionary Tales.
A man on the end, clean shaven and somewhere between Mark/Marc’s and Mr. Garret Charles’s ages, is the only new addition, the only adult here who didn’t previously see me almost split my jeans in half. On cue, he smiles at me and says, “Hi, Anthony. I’m Calvin, and I’m the A.D.”
My face must change, because Rex Rollins says, “The assistant director, Anthony.” He rolls back to behind the desk, asking, “So what will you be singing for us today?”
“I would like to please sing ‘Bigger Isn’t Better’ from the Broadway musical Barnum,” I say like Libby and I rehearsed, holding my music tight.
“Bring it over here, kid,” Sammy says, and I do. “Could you use the piano lid and tap out the tempo you’d like?”
“What do you mean?” I say.
“Just snap for me how quickly you’d like me to play this.” Such service! I wonder if Sammy would get me a sandwich, too. I’m starving, never even got a fajita.
Back on my x in the middle of the room, I stand there smiling and smiling, smiling so hard my jaw starts to lock, and Sammy calls out, “Let me know when we’re ready to go!” and I yell back “Ready!” and he starts.
And perhaps I snapped too quickly.
Suddenly “Bigger Isn’t Better”—an adorable song, sung by the midget in a show about circus folk—goes from being a sweet ditty about the merits of being a tiny person to being a warp-speed tongue twister. Words fly from my mouth, just barely, like I’m turning myself in for a murder.
The murder of my own career.
“Oh, gosh,” I say, before I’ve even finished the last verse. “That was terrible. I was terrible.”
The room laughs, possibly at me.
“No, it was fine, it was fine,” Rex says.
Though I bet you it isn’t enough to just be “fine” in New York. Please, crazy poor ladies at bus terminals have fur coats, here. “Fine” in New York may be stardom in Jankburg, but it’s still just fine.
“Did you prepare a monologue?” Calvin the assistant director says, but maybe not. I can’t tell at this point; the sun is high enough now that the table of intimidating people is being backlit, casting them only as a series of judgmental silhouettes. I bet they’ve never seen a kid in such a tight outfit.
“A monologue?” I say, or stammer.
“Yes,” Rex Rollins says, “a short speech from—”
But I want to shout out, “I know what a monologue is, you dip.” (I half memorized all seven of Hamlet’s speeches last winter, over Christmas break, using them as a prayer before digging into a bucket of KFC.)
“I know several portions of Hamlet,” I say, and this is the first time bald, British Garret Charles laughs, grunting so hard that the glasses from on top of his head fall, crashing onto a salad. Suddenly I realize the entire team is eating lunch, chomping away like horses at feed.
Mr. Charles leaps up, quickly, in that surprising way an old dancer guy can slink (probably because of his years at the Harry Potter Ballet School or whatever) and changes tactics immediately, his panther jump from the seat turning into the slow, calculated crawl of a turtle. A ticked-off turtle hiding a machete in his shell. “Do you know,” Garret says, now ten feet away from me, getting closer by the inch, “when E.T. takes place?”
“Well, I—”
“1982, Anthony. 1982.” I am momentarily pleased that he doesn’t know my real name. “1982. And do you know when Hamlet takes place, Anthony?” I always assumed, on account of the flowery language, that Hamlet took place around 1400, since everything in England takes place in 1400. “1400?” I try, and the table chuckles.
But Garret Charles snaps back at them: “Enough.” His lip twitches, and he’s getting pinker by the insult. “Not 1400, Anthony. Not 1400 by half.” Now he changes the walk entirely, bouncing around me, circling like a werewolf who found
a box of sugar. “You know, when I was the movement consultant at the RSC—” He pauses. “Do you know what the RSC stands for?”
“I’m afraid I don’t, Mr. Ch—”
“The Royal Shakespeare Company, and if you don’t know who Shakespeare is, I don’t want to know. The first thing I did, as the movement consultant, was research the period. Get into the head space of these people. For it isn’t enough to dance a step—”
And here, Mr. Charles turns on himself, spinning into a double swirl that is, I’ve got to admit, quite something—like Michael Jackson himself possessed the soul of my old grandpa, including the white socks and black loafers.
“It isn’t enough to whip out a fancy turn of footwork—”
And Garret Charles pulls out another maneuver, this time marching around like some band leader, pumping his arms, pointing his feet so hard, one of the loafers comes loose and threatens to interrupt his entire interrogation.
I now flick my gaze to the table, catching Monica’s billboard-wide eyes.
“The point being,” Garret Charles says, “you aren’t to come into my temple and waste our time with a Hamlet soliloquy when you are, presumably, auditioning for the role of a twelve-year-old boy in 1982 California. Research is needed, research before submitting any skill to a panel.”
“He is,” Rex Rollins, now the color of an overripe grape, says, “to be honest, Garret, being considered for a number of tracks.”
Garret Charles looks at Rex, wilting him, and then back at me, with a nod to the door. “Unless you’ve got something appropriate, age appropriate and modern and fit for a boy like you . . . Unless you’re willing to show us something pleading; for, after all, Elliott’s journey is that of a pleading boy, pleading for a father’s love, a father we never even meet. Pleading for his new alien best friend not to die on him, not to leave him, throughout the whole of the play.”
Libby warned me about people like this. People who refer to musicals as “plays.”
Mark and Marc and Rex Rollins are all biting the nails off the fingers of the knuckles they are also cracking. It’s my first New York audition and I already know we’re going over the time limit, that I’ve been in here twice as long as the last girl. That Garret Charles has chosen me to humiliate, probably to vent his exhaustion at being jet lagged or something.
