Entr'acte (4 page)

“We’re raising a generation of sociopaths,” Cliff picked up again. “Look at the games they play. All of those video games where the object is to shoot and kill as many others as you can.

Look at the message the courts are sending out.”

Joyce didn’t know what to say to all this, or even if she should say anything at all. She was sorry her friend was so bitter, but she knew that cynicism was also found among the young.

One of her good friends at college used as a motto, “People are assholes.”

“When I was young, people helped each other. We all worked together for the common good,” Cliff said. “You didn’t have these horrendous, conscious-less crimes like you do today.”

“What about Leopold and Loeb?” Joyce had observed, but as she suspected this was not a conversation but a diatribe. She listened politely for a few more minutes and then had excused herself.

Edging back onto the highway, Joyce worked her way over to the far right lane and stayed there, maintaining a constant speed except to let cars merge in front of hers.

Soon, after passing the hulking buildings of Co-op City, she crossed over to the West Side Highway. Joyce had been to New York City a few times before: for a weekend of Broadway shows with her grandmother that included the legendary “Rent,” and to the museums and a Mets baseball game with her father.

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She remembered that on one of those trips with her father he had pointed out that more people lived in one of those large brick housing projects near 125th Street than did in Waldoboro.

Joyce already felt small as the office towers of midtown Manhattan sprang up around the car. She got off the crumbling highway near 42nd Street and cruised down Eighth Avenue and along the piers where the trans-Atlantic ships once docked, when that was the main way to travel.

She headed downtown, past the fabled Macy’s in Herald Square and to Washington Square Park at the edge of the New York University campus. Joyce had wanted to go to NYU and major in theater there—with its famous faculty and with the city’s hundreds of venues as her lab. But her parents had forbid it, and they were paying her tuition.

The sights and smells were fascinating to Amelia; the small dog pressed her muzzle against the passenger window, her saliva obscuring the view.

Amelia barked sharply when a young man slapped the hood of Joyce’s car as he crossed in front of it at a red light. “It’s okay, girl,” Joyce laughed. “They’re allowed to do that here.”

She turned onto Macdougall Street and headed toward the address the Collins’ had given her, an older brick building with a.

tea shop and a newsstand on the first floor. Then she pulled up to the curb, let Amelia out and grabbed her suitcase from the hatchback.

Joyce could hear several locks sliding back off their metal arms after she had been buzzed in and identified herself again at the apartment door.

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Debbie, her new roommate, was a short, slightly plump woman with straight dark hair to the middle of her back and large, round brown eyes.

She looked, Joyce thought, like a high school cheerleader. And in short order she found out Debbie had indeed been one, as well as the girl in her high school voted most likely to become a star.

This neighborhood is probably filled with people who can make that claim, Joyce thought to herself as she was shown the kitchen, living room, bathroom and the bedroom she would occupy.

The furniture was older, yard sale stuff but it had a certain charm and it was in the first place of her own—Joyce loved it.

“I thought we could go to lunch but you probably want to unpack first,” Debbie said.

Joyce opened one of the dresser drawers, dumped the contents of her suitcase in it and put the suitcase under the bed.

“I’m unpacked,” she announced.

“We’re going to get along fine,” Debbie laughed.

After putting down bowls of fresh water and food for Amelia, the girls climbed into Joyce’s car and headed back uptown toward Times Square.

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“You’re going to find having a car is a major hassle, you might even want to sell it,” Debbie said as they looked for a parking lot.

Joyce said she couldn’t imagine doing that; the car was a high school graduation gift from her parents, bought second-hand but lovingly maintained.

“That’s what I said, too,” Debbie smiled with the air of a city native. “Wait until you need money.”

They found a parking lot near 40th Street and Broadway that charged $21.50 per day; enough, Joyce pointed out, to get a complete oil change at home.

She was dismayed to hear that she was expected to leave her keys. “We got to move’em. We need the keys,” the attendant said.

“If I leave you the keys, what’s to stop you from driving off in my car?” Joyce asked.

The attendant, a thin young man in dirty jeans, grinned and shrugged at her question. He held up the receipt, with “No bailment created” printed on it. Then, seeing the look on Joyce’s face, he told her: “Relax. It’s a VW. No one wants those.”

The girls watched as the attendant drove Joyce’s car with the door partly open all the way to the back of the lot. The cars were parked in several long rows, one in front of the other with only inches between bumpers and grills.

With a series of deft maneuvers he wedged the car into the last spot in a row, between the stone wall of the adjoining building and a 1998 Acura Legend nearly the same color as Joyce’s car.

“Come on,” Debbie said. “We don’t want to be here when the owner of that car wants to leave.”

They walked a few blocks to Nathan’s for lunch, moving with their yellow plastic trays past nearly every kind of fast food imaginable.

“I promised my mother I’d eat well,” Joyce laughed, putting the end of a foot-long hot dog in her mouth.

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“It’s a lot cheaper to eat at home, but I thought you’d like a welcome to the city lunch,” Debbie said. “If you can cook we’ll eat really well. I’ve been buying up all the makings and having salads.”

Joyce agreed to cook and Debbie agreed to do the dishes.

Joyce figured up her weekly expenses on a yellow napkin, with Debbie providing estimates of what things cost. “There are a lot of free things to do. You just have to know where to find them,”

she said.

From their discussion Joyce realized that Debbie had used up both of the “meals out” in her weekly budget to take her to lunch at Nathan’s. She resolved to take Debbie somewhere nice for a dinner.

Joyce swallowed a Depakote tablet with the last of her soda, and over the rim of her cup she saw Debbie’s eyes widen.

“Medicine. Prescription,” she said quickly. “I have to take it three times a day, but I’m fine.”

There was an awkward pause, and then Joyce asked her roommate, “So, you seeing anybody?”

“Well… There’s Ron.” Debbie rolled her eyes. “He showed me the ropes when I first got here, and he feels it gives him squatter’s rights. So far, no one’s challenged him.”

“I know how that is,” Joyce said. “I broke up with my boyfriend just before I left. It wasn’t going anywhere. He’s looking for a PTA wife.”

Debbie had been in New York three months, and worked in a video store and a vintage clothing store to make ends meet. She told Joyce she went on her “rounds” every morning, going to every open call she could find. But so far she hadn’t been given a second look.

“The only acting work I’ve done at all was in a student film at N.Y.U. They shot it in New Jersey,” Debbie said. “These guys 34

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were big fans of “Cinefantastique’ and “Fangoria.’ You know, real devotees of special-effects gore.”

“Sounds awful,” Joyce said.

“Well, it had a sense of humor to it. It was about a Tory judge during the Revolutionary War who was taken prisoner in his own house by the rebels. When the British came to rescue him, it was dark, and they accidentally bayoneted the old judge.”

“Terrific,” Joyce said wryly.

“That was all prologue,” Debbie said excitedly. “Turns out the judge’s ghost haunted the place, and shall we say, he was a bit miffed. So most of the movie takes place in modern, rural New Jersey—there is such a thing by the way. I know, it surprised me too…”

She went on describing the plot of the movie, shredding her napkin as she spoke, while Joyce watched the light in her eyes.

Debbie was speaking really fast, and Joyce could only catch every third word or so. But it was obvious that even this small brush with show business had thrilled her.

It came out that this judge’s ghost was terrorizing the modern town, and that he had a nasty habit of bayoneting strangers wandering off the highway.

“So what was your part in this?” Joyce finally asked.

“Body No. 3,” Debbie said with a wry smile. “You saw me in an establishing shot go into this tumbled down old barn with my horny date. We’re on the run from something, but it’s never made clear what. Just details, right?

“Anyway, in the next shot I come running out of the barn screaming, and covered in blood. I have an axe sticking out of my back, and as I reach the foreground of the shot I fall over dead and the camera gets a nice close-up of the axe handle.”

“Well, it’s work, right?” Joyce asked. “You did get paid, didn’t you?”

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“Yea. I got $140, pizza for lunch and a ride both ways,”

Debbie said. “They poured buckets of Karo syrup over my head, red sticky stuff it took days to get out of my hair. I looked like Sissy Spacek in “Carrie.’ I also got a DVD of the movie—it took longer to edit and put the titles and music in than to shoot. Turns out that’s what the grade was on, post-production.”

She promised to show Joyce a clip of her scene, which Debbie had uploaded to You Tube and used as an audition reel.

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Debbie browsed in a bookstore while Joyce deposited her inheritance check and set up two different accounts. She put most of the money into a savings passbook that paid a high interest rate, and $2,500 into a checking account.

Joyce had to practically fight off the offer of a Visa card from the “personal banking consultant” on the platform. “I already have one,” she pointed out.

“We have a special arrangement with our larger depositors; there’s no annual fee. Plus, we link all of your accounts to determine your minimum monthly balance. Your checking is free as long as your total deposits equal $5,000,” he said.

Joyce wasn’t sure but she thought the banker was coming on to her. She was never very good at picking up on those kinds of things. But since she only planned to keep enough money in her checking account to pay her bills the arrangement suited her.

She left with a calendar, a leatherette checkbook wallet, a letter opener and paperweight with the bank’s logo on them, an ATM

card, a coupon for free traveler’s checks and the business card of her “personal banker.”

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No wonder these places have to be bailed out, Joyce thought, if they consider me a big depositor and give out all this junk.

The roommates bought copies of BACKSTAGE and SHOW

BUSINESS newspapers, that list all of the casting calls, agents and “talent services.”

One of the ads for photographers listed a studio only a few blocks away promising same-day service. The ad said that a complete resume could be printed on the back of an 8x10 glossy photo, with the performer’s name embossed in the right-hand corner.

The studio was on the third floor of a narrow brick building housing a cut-rate electronics store on the street level. Next door was a Greek restaurant with a walk-up window, the smell of the baklava following the women into the foyer.

The photographer occupied two rooms. In the front was an office, with a desktop printing operation, three-ring binders full of samples of his work, and a small sink and lighted vanity table.

Through heavy curtains was the studio itself at the rear. The guy immediately descended on the two of them, and when he determined that only Joyce was a prospective client, he honed in on her with a hard-sell approach.

Although she had intended to get an idea of the cost and how she ought to dress, the photographer insisted what Joyce had on was fine without so much as glancing at her outfit.

The price in the ad turned out to be for 50 black and white photos; color was extra, fast service was extra, “and they’re cheaper by the hundred,” he wheedled.

Debbie took Joyce aside and whispered to her that she was being charged too much. “I ran my resume off myself at a quick-copy place. I got 100 for $9, on nice heavy paper. Black and white photos are good enough, and he wants too much for those.”

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several times, announcing that time is money. Although there wasn’t a sign of it, he claimed he was very busy, and had a large group coming in by appointment later.

Joyce named a price for 50 black and white photos that was about two-thirds of what he had asked for. “That’s with the embossed name line, resume on the back, and ready by the end of the day,” she said.

“No way, forget it,” he said, and pushed through the curtains into the studio. Joyce and Debbie turned around to leave but the photographer was still talking.

“…obviously think I’m running a vegetable stand here. I can’t get something like that ready in a few hours, it’s already the middle of the afternoon. Maybe first thing tomorrow.”

Joyce turned to Debbie. “That would mean I could go out on calls tomorrow too. I want to get started. And the price isn’t bad now.”

She felt her roommate looking at her with admiration, and called through the curtains, “Do we have a deal, or what?”

“Yea, yea,” the guy said resignedly. “Sit down there and make yourself beautiful. I’ll be right with you.”

There were jars of makeup on the table, but as they unscrewed the lid of each jar, the women convulsed in laughter. One jar had purple eye shadow, another green and a third one appeared to be silver eye shadow with gold glitter in it. “Who would wear this stuff?” Joyce said.