Better Nate Than Ever

by Federle, Tim

  I leap up, back to the x, and say, “I was able to do that, two shows a day, for a whole weekend of performances in my friend’s basement back home.” But, actually, I’m gasping between each word, so it’s breathier than that.

  “Nate, are you visiting town for the first time?” Calvin says. I wonder what he’s getting at.

  “Well, I mean, technically yes, but I feel like a native already. The—uh—the A train was running local this morning, and it really ticked me off.”

  Calvin smiles again, the inverse reaction to Garret Charles (who rolls his eyes so hugely, I think he’s either having a stroke or doing a corneal impression of the setting sun), and says, “Will you be around for a few days is what I meant.”

  Holy cow!

  “Absolutely,” I say, or scream. “Absolutely I’ll be around for a few days.” Since Mom and Dad have probably rented my room out already, or Anthony has turned it into a free-weight studio, I’m practically not even lying.

  Sammy stands from behind the piano and says, “Can I just make a note about something, Nate? What’s your top note?”

  My top note? Vocally? I always crack on the bridge of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” (the Jennifer Holliday version, not the movie—as if).

  “Jeez, I’m not exactly sure. I’m a—uh—‘boy soprano with a ballsy chest voice,’ according to my best friend.”

  Sammy looks at the team, and his eyes go wide: “I think I’m going to Tweet that later on.” Though I might have misheard him.

  A knock from behind me, and I turn to see a short black man duck his head in and say, “We got this studio now, folks,” and Rex says, “Just one second, sir, I promise we’re just on our way.”

  The whole team stands on cue, desperate for some fresh, wet air, I presume. Rex Rollins walks up to me and says, “Well, nice job today, Nate, and welcome to New York.” And all those crazy quirks about his face, the rolling chin and sweaty forehead, they melt away. And he just about looks like Santa Claus after a close shave.

  “Thank you, Mr. Rollins,” I say, and when Marc, the sassier of the two bearded boys, opens the door to let me out, and I turn to thank the rest of the team, they’re all hunched over the desk, chatting loudly. Marc says, “You see that girl in the corner, the one with the long hair?”

  And indeed, there she is, a new girl I hadn’t even noticed, sitting in a metal fold-up chair and looking at her iPhone (an iPhone for everyone! I wonder if you just get one at the Lincoln Tunnel, if you come in via car and not bus).

  “That girl,” Marc says, “is the reader. And her job is to read all the parts on the page that aren’t your part.” Oh, God. “So you were really just supposed to be reading Elliott.” He’s gaining volume and kind of enjoying ridiculing me, the way somebody just a few years older than you can love power more than genuinely old people like your parents.

  “Though”—a voice sneaks up, and Calvin pops out from behind Marc’s shoulder—“your best friend is right. You’re definitely ballsy, buddy.” He pats me on the head and says, “Nice to meet you, Natey Foster.”

  And I decide that Natey Foster is a better stage name than Anthony Foster anyway, a better stage name all along. Especially if I can learn to say it without a stutter.

  I’m floating back to the elevator bank, my limbs and bookbag and good-luck rabbit foot drifting around me as if suspended in the syrupy ooze of celebration. And as I turn the corner, past the Vitamin Water display and the pole-dance girls (cooling down with a series of stretches that should not be legal in public, let alone a hallway), Marc comes running after me.

  “Nate,” Marc says, suddenly in a nice voice. He’s not out of breath at all, and probably spends most of his life in the gym on account of his rippling biceps, not that a kid like me would notice them. “Could you just come back to the room, for one more second?”

  “Did I leave something in there?” I ask, following him back.

  “The team just wants to talk to you.”

  Usually when groups of adults want to speak to me it’s because a grandparent has died or I’ve let Feather pee on somebody’s flower bed.

  “Nate!” they all say when I walk through the door.

  “Yes?” I say back, or yell, or scream.

  “We can’t stop talking about you,” one of them says. “We’ve never seen an audition like yours.” At this point, forgive me, the dizziness of the day has taken such a toll, I’m not even sure whose mouth is moving. I’m not even sure if it’s a person talking, and not my dreams.

  “I hope that’s a good thing,” I say, and can feel my leg shaking.

  “Well, it’s always good to be memorable,” Garret Charles says, “though we can’t figure out what makes you so memorable.” He appears to now be wearing all three pairs of his glasses. Man, he must be old.

  I turn to the side, right here on the centered x, and point at my mouth: “Usually it’s the underbite. My most memorable feature is my underbite, and it goes down from there, literally.”

  “Nate,” Rex Rollins says, “is this cell phone number, here, on your application sheet—is this the best number to call you?”

  “Absolutely sir,” I say, or maybe shout or sing.

  “Okay, well, as long as you’re in New York anyway, we may want to see you again. For a callback. So just . . . stand by.”

  Stand by, indeed.

  Calvin gets up again. So far, he’s my best friend here, tall and footbally but with none of the football vibe I’ve come to associate with guys who look like him. He doesn’t seem to want to beat me up at all.

  “Hey, and Nate,” he says, opening the door, showing me to the hallway for the hundredth time today. “Don’t be afraid to put a little more deodorant on. You know? It’s something every guy goes through, and it’s probably time for you as well.”

  Nobody in my family would ever have given me such simple, helpful advice.

  Anthony would have wrapped it in a lecture on how it wouldn’t matter even if I didn’t stink, because no girl would want to come near me in a million years. And Dad wouldn’t have even noticed me, himself smelling like janitor fumes (equal parts Lysol and banana peels, like a comedy act gone horribly clean). And Mom? Well, Mom can never have a tough talk with me, passing it all off to Dad, who passes it all off to God. Mom just talks in figure eights, making everything around her dizzy.

  “Honest, Nate,” Calvin says, “I have to put on my Mitchum three times a day in the summer, sometimes.” (Mitchum! So much for the store-brand stuff that I packed.) “Wait’ll you survive a New York summer.”

  And he hands me a ten-dollar bill.

  With that, I’m drifting back down the hall, out to the street, off to Duane Reade, floating and stinking and smiling, off to the Mitchum deodorant aisle, a grown-up in New York City.

  Not only alive, by God, but thriving.

  Starmites My Life to Oblivion

  And starving. Thriving and starving and stinking broke (and stinking stinking) and homeless. Oh my God, it’s gotten superdark out, too, superfast. How did I not plan for this?

  What would the character Elliott do?

  E.T. would probably build Elliott a fort out of Reese’s Pieces, or something.

  That settles it.

  I’ll pick up some Reese’s Pieces en route to the Mitchum deodorant aisle, as inspiration. Plus, Reese’s are loaded with protein (peanut butter is a complex protein, according to the parts of my Health class I didn’t practice my autograph during), and I’ve got to get something to eat. Anything at this point.

  It’s five o’clock, and this Duane Reade across from Port Authority, brightly lit and practically cheerful, might be the nicest drugstore I’ve ever visited, decorated with cutouts of ghosts and goblins: something that might’ve scared me even just a few years ago, when I was a kid.

  I’ve got ten dollars, exactly, ten dollars and one penny to stretch between candy corn (starch), Reese’s Pieces (protein), and, critically, Mitchum (pride).

  Also, I should figure o
ut where I’m going to sleep tonight. Yeah, that.

  Starmites! Where am I going to sleep? (1989; sixty performances; the musical’s setting was a place called Shreikwood Forest, and I’m not kidding.)

  Starmites my life to oblivion.

  And as I break into my version of a mild panic (lightly humming the Vietnam evacuation scene from Miss Saigon in an unreasonably high key), I get the first good idea in all of this trip. The Duane Reade travel aisle is awash in everything a kid like me would need: tweezers (never underestimate the power of tweezers) and mini-deodorants and mouthwash and—this is the exciting part—an entire bin full of cell-phone chargers.

  I drop to my knees and rummage through, finally landing upon my beloved/hated Nokia plug-in. It’s $4.99, on sale, and that should leave enough change for one more item: I go with Reese’s Pieces, figuring food is more important than my stench right now and that I can take care of all that by giving myself a good scrub-down later on tonight.

  In the bathroom of wherever I . . . uh . . . end up.

  Starmites.

  “Would you like to make a donation to children with cerebral palsy?” the salesgirl says, scanning my items. I’m actually kind of glad I’m not buying my new Mitchum, because a girl would be embarrassing to buy deodorant in front of. It’s like how I can’t figure out how any adult buys toilet paper with a straight face.

  “Sorry, I can’t afford it,” I say, “but would you like to make a donation to children who don’t have a place to sleep tonight?”

  She doesn’t laugh.

  I make for the exit, and in the city wind I’m an instant icicle, a Nate-pop, and duck back into the store to throw my jeans on over my flag-size shorts. This is like trying to stuff overbaggy boxers into a pair of tight pants. I don’t know how Anthony does it. This is the chief reason I wear tighty-whities.

  Then I do something really bad, and I’m just going to fully disclose it here because I can edit it out later. Sitting just by the drugstore exit, a box teems with donated winter coats.

  A Homeless Winter Coat drive.

  Everything is extreme here. Winter doesn’t really start back home, not on the clock anyway, until mid-November. I guess in Manhattan you have to start putting on winter coats early in the season, so you don’t freeze on your walk between Duane Reade and the cardboard box you’ll eventually sleep in tonight.

  “I’ll just Google this charity and donate my first week of E.T. salary directly to the homeless,” I say out loud. And when I finally find a winter coat I like—a big hood trimmed with fake fur, and a cool crisscross of electric yellow and burgundy—a security guard from Duane Reade appears like a ghost, presumably to hang/prosecute me. I throw on the jacket and dash out onto Forty-second Street, smacking straight into a pretzel cart and a woman with a stroller and a guy on a scooter and a couple other kids.

  I smack into a lot of things pretty regularly, actually.

  Luckily, the jacket is about thirty sizes too big for me, shielding me from trauma. God, if I get sent back to General Thomas Junior High, I should just wear this all day long: a padded bruise protector.

  I bruise easily.

  I’ve got to eat something.

  And when I pull my furry yellow hood back (ha ha: “furry yellow hood” sounds like something Anthony would like about a girl or something), a blazingly huge Chevys, the biggest and most wholesome Mexican restaurant in America and likely the world, is draped across the sky like a billboard tailored to my heart.

  And I’ve got a plan.

  A Salsa Crawl Is Not a Dance Move

  “Table for two, please,” I say. “My mom is just about to show up. And preferably we’d like something by the door.”

  The nice-enough lady walks me clear to the other side of Chevys (not by the door at all) and seats me beneath a hanging potted plant, confirming my theory: Everything green in New York is potted. An island of asphalt is simply not fit for growing things. I find that so inspiring.

  “Oh!” I say, just as she’s clearing a table for me. “Do you have something with a plug? I don’t even need a view of Times Square or anything, but an outlet is crucial.”

  She kind of puffs her cheeks out, like she’s dealing with another stupid out-of-towner (which, to be honest), and seats me all the way upstairs, right by the bathroom. Not ideal for a number of reasons (the combo of bathroom smells and salsa, chiefly) and it’ll make my eventual escape tougher, but by golly there’s a plug right beneath the booth.

  In thirty seconds, my Nokia is back in business.

  I won’t bore you with the texts that have filed in; there are roughly a trillion, most from Libby, a few from Anthony, and one from . . . oh, God. Mom.

  “WE ARE WORRIED SICK WHERE R U NATHAN.”

  Whenever Mom texts, it’s serious. She’s as averse to technology as I am to pencils.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

  And to make things worse, I can’t even counterbalance the narrative by providing an encouraging message from Rex Rollins the casting director, because the only voice mails are from Mom, too (same all-caps message as above, with more shrieks, and my dad stomping around in the background), and one from Libby: “Call me ASAP, Jack.”

  “Can I get you anything to drink?” a new voice says.

  My head jerks up, poking out from its furry yellow hood, my elbows barely reaching the table. This berserk-looking Ewok is starving. “A water with a lemon and a lime both, please, and the largest free basket of chips that you’re allowed to bring me.”

  The waiter smiles and kind of glides away. The good news is, I have my protein/dessert already taken care of (shout-out to Mr. Reese: love your Pieces, sir), and the dual serving of fruit slices in the water checks that box off the list. Plus, the chips and salsa are like a free, cold pizza, which happens to be my favorite way to eat piz—

  What am I doing? I have to call Libby.

  Two rings and she picks up.

  “Libby!”

  “Hi—uh—Mom,” she says in her “acting” voice.

  Uh-oh. Trouble.

  “Stay with me,” she mutters into her phone, and I make out a series of slams and yells and the general hubbubery of angry adults in the background.

  And too many men’s voices.

  There are no men’s voices in Libby’s house, unless she’s listening to the cast album of Damn Yankees. And even then it would sound more like a gentle baseball game and less like . . . this.

  The waiter brings my water and basket of chips, placing a glorious salsa bowl in front of me, and I put my hand to the receiver and whisper to him: “Allow me to mull over the menu until my mom gets here, please,” and I’m back to my bestie. “What’s going on, Libby?”

  “You tell me,” she says.

  “Well, the stats: I’m at a Chevys in Times Square.”

  “You’re still in New York?” she says in a stage whisper.

  “Where are you?”

  “At your house, along with half the neighborhood, and your parents. Your mom is, like, threatening to call the police.”

  “The police?” I say, or yelp. The people at the table next to me, a bunch of tourists (in coats that fit them), stop eating and stare at me.

  “I know. It’s dramatic. But you are the very definition of a missing minor at this point.”

  I would stand and pace but don’t want to unplug the phone from its socket. God these chips are good, at least. Chips just work on every level, you know?

  “So what—God, what am I going to do?” I say.

  “Uh—get on the next bus?”

  I’d meant that question rhetorically. I don’t like Libby taking this tone with me. It’s very Mama Rose/Gypsy, and I’d never be comfortable playing a stripper.

  “The audition actually went very well, Libby. By the way. Like: I didn’t get cut, or I did at first but then got called back.”

  “You got a callback?” she shrieks, and then I hear her turn from the phone and say, “It’s nothing, Mrs. Foster. My mom is just checking on me
.”

  Feather barks and this just about breaks my heart, so in tribute I break a chip in half and eat it without my hands, just like he would.

  “Yup. I mean, I sang for the team today and everything.”

  “The team,” Libby says, chuckling. “You are so boss, Nate. You are boss.”

  I’m boss! This is Libby’s greatest compliment! Usually she’s boss and I’m not even vice boss.

  “So what now?” she says, and I swear I hear our grass crunching beneath her feet, Libby walking out her worries so that I don’t have to.

  “Well, I’m doing a salsa crawl, starting with Chevys. Because I’m broke. Like, I have no idea where I’m going to sleep tonight.”

  “I can Google ‘youth hostels.’ I didn’t think it would come to this, but I can do some work on that. Also, my mom has that step-brother who lives in Queens.”

  “Interesting,” I say. “But how do you get to Queens? Do I have to charter a bus or something?”

  “Prob’ly,” Libby says. “The only thing I really know about New York is what’s playing on Broadway, y’know? Did you read they’re doing a revival of Into the Woods where all the actors play their own instruments?”

  “Coolio.” The waiter returns. “Could you tell me what you have on, like, special, sir?” I say, crooking my head against the phone, which is still partially concealed by my hood, and pretending to listen to him. Libby and I just have so much to catch up on. “Keep talking,” I ventriloquize to her.

  “Okay,” she says, launching. “So here’s the thing: There’s a Nate Foster neighborhood watch and everything. The Kruehler family is patrolling the front of the cul-de-sac, with BB guns, and your dad is on the roof with a big flashlight. And somebody went to school, suggesting—this was actually hilarious—that you might have gone in to the library, on a Sunday, to study.”

  That is hilarious, hilarious and sad. God, if anybody gets hurt trying to find me, I’ll kill myself.