Entr'acte (6 page)

Debbie, sitting in the back seat, said nothing. Doug pressed himself against the door handle looking like a puppy caught making a mistake on an Oriental rug.

No one said much when the three of them got back to the 49

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apartment. Debbie took out her spare set of linens and a blanket and tossed them onto the sofa.

Doug got the idea right away, especially after Joyce went into her room and closed the door.

* * * *

“Sounds like you don’t have a relationship,” Debbie muttered, as she poured coffee.

“Let me go with you while you look for work,” Doug said to Joyce. “It’ll be fun. Maybe I’ll get a part too.”

The two young women looked at each other over his head, and Joyce shrugged as if to say, “What am I going to do? I did love him once, for very good reasons.”

“Maybe we can go for lunch to one of those places people are always being discovered in, just for a goof,” Doug said.

“You’re thinking of Schwab’s Drugstore,” Joyce answered dryly. “That’s in L.A., it’s out of business, and nobody’s sure that ever happened anyway.”

“There must be a place where all the people in the business go to eat,” Doug said.

“The BUSINESS?” Joyce giggled. “Where’d you get that,

“Entertainment Tonight’?”

“There IS Cipriani’s,” Debbie mused. “Everybody who is anybody is seen in there.”

Joyce glared at her roommate, who just smiled impassively back at her.

“There you go,” Doug almost shouted. “Let’s go there. We can meet at 1 o’clock. It’s on me, your welcome to New York lunch.”

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“I’d grab that,” Debbie said to Joyce. She shook the nearly-empty cereal box for emphasis.

I’m looking forward to my rid-of-Doug lunch, Joyce thought.

Why would I want to be seen in a place like Cipriani’s, let alone with Doug? But she bit her tongue and kept quiet.

A few minutes later, Debbie slid the strap of her shoulder bag up her arm and took her MetroCard out of her purse. “Are you going to be all right here?” she quietly asked.

Joyce walked her to the front door, apologizing for the disruption Doug was causing. “He’s not a bad guy really. He really does care about me; sometimes I worry I may not find that again.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Deb answered.

“Would it be all right if I let him stay here until the weekend, when I’ll have more time to deal with this? He’d stay on the couch, and I’d get him to chip in for expenses.

“It’s going to take me awhile to get free of him,” Joyce went on. “I have to do it in my own way.”

“Sure,” Deb agreed on her way out. “Knock ’em dead today.”

The couple set their lunch plans as they drove back to the Theater District. Joyce left the Bug in the same lot, and nonchalantly flipped the keys to the attendant who was there the day before. When the young man touched the brim of his Yankee cap and smiled at Joyce, she felt her soon-to-be ex tense up beside her.

“Who was that?” Doug wanted to know as soon as they got out of the attendant’s earshot. “I told you I’d be meeting new people,” Joyce said, exasperated. She gave Doug a peck on the cheek and he brightened up a bit.

A few moments later they mumbled an awkward goodbye, and Doug headed off to the museums along upper Fifth Avenue.

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Joyce walked the several blocks to the photographer’s studio.

The photos were waiting for her, wrapped in brown paper, on his desk.

“Sorry if I was a little rude yesterday,” he said. “I see so many people looking for something for nothing.”

Joyce nodded; he seemed sincere.

“I really do wish you well,” he said. “Maybe we can get together sometime.”

“I really don’t think…” Joyce started to say. He still had a hold of one end of the envelope, and he pulled it toward him, bringing Joyce’s face within range of his puckered lips.

She gave a hearty tug and got the package away from him. As Joyce started down the stairs, she heard the guy call after her, “I’ll give you a call. I have your number right here.”

He was waving a copy of her resume and grinning oily at her.

Things didn’t get any better a little after 9, when Joyce reached the unmarked building where a popular ABC soap is taped. There were at least 70 young women inside the heavy glass doors of the office lobby, all of whom looked to Joyce to be perfect for the part—whatever it was.

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She handed her resume and photo to a rather perfunctory clerk, who glanced at it and tossed it into a wire basket.

She sat in one of those industrial modern chairs, where a strip of coarse beige fabric is stretched over a length of PVC pipe shaped like a potato chip.

Joyce picked up a copy of Elle magazine off the coffee table and leafed through it, eyeing the competition and trying to eavesdrop without being too obvious.

“Going out to the Hamptons this weekend?” one tall blonde was asking another. “It’s a little early but the season has started. A bunch of guys from class have a house for the summer…”

“Mezzaluna has the best pizza in Aspen. It’s New York style,”

a young man who looked like a messenger said.

“In other words, the same stuff you can get here,” his friend said. “If you’re going to be in Aspen, go to the Jerome Hotel. Last time I was there Eva Longoria, Jennifer Anniston and Vince Vaughan were at the same table.”

“Did they ask you to join them?” the messenger guy shot back.

More people gravitated to this conversation, which seemed to be about the places to be seen in as many different cities as one could sound familiar with. Joyce guessed there was some kind of point system for ridiculing everyone else’s choices, with extra credit for name-dropping.

She thought of all the famous people she had met. Once her grandmother booked the reigning Miss America for a visit to her dance studio in Camden.

Muriel and Joyce were impressed with the young woman, but since she wanted to be a veterinarian and had juggled in the talent competition, there wasn’t a whole lot Miss America could share with the class.

She and her father had also seen the first President Bush once, 53

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shopping for fishing lures. It was after he had left office but Bush and his family were in Maine a lot back then.

Unlike some “year round summer people” who never quite get the handle on living in Maine, the President and his family really belonged.

Joyce decided no one in this group would want to hear about her Bush siting.

“The Little Five Points Pub is a good place,” the clerk who had taken Joyce’s resume said.

“Where’s that?” somebody in the knot of people asked, in an apparently unguarded moment.

“Atlanta.” The clerk said the word slowly and deliberately, like someone trying to teach an infant to say “ma-ma.”

“Well, who the hell goes there in summer anyway?” the embarrassed woman asked.

Two women sitting on Joyce’s right were also eavesdropping. “I’ll be hitting the same old clubs in the Village,” the prettier one said.

“Oh, no. New York in summer is for the tourists,” her friend said in mock concern. “You HAVE to go somewhere else.”

“I spent all the money I had just to get here,” the first woman said, putting on a sad little voice.

Joyce introduced herself, feeling a kinship to these two. Danae was from Illinois and Beth was from Wisconsin; they had gone to college together.

They had just exchanged phone numbers and were sharing some information on auditions when Joyce’s name was called.

The three waved their goodbyes and genuinely wished each other luck.

The woman who took Joyce back to her cubicle wore her pearlized glasses on a thin gold chain around her neck. She held the glasses up just in front of her nose and read the resume that way, like a jeweler inspecting a diamond.

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“How long have you been in New York?” the woman finally said, not unkindly.

“Counting today?” Joyce smiled.

“Two things,”’ the casting assistant said. “Your hair color. It’s hard to classify. I’d say you’re a brunette if I had to, but it’s very light—you might want to consider going blonde or a shade or two darker.”

Joyce nodded.

“There are a few strands of early gray—what are you, 20 years old?”

“Nineteen,” Joyce said. “We get gray early in my family.”

“I would do something about that. And your eyes. They’re lovely, but kind of a pale green. Have you thought of emphasizing them, maybe with contacts to heighten the color?”

“No, I hadn’t. I’m here for acting work,” Joyce said, getting a bit miffed. “I don’t see what all this has to do with it.”

The casting assistant leaned over her desk and whispered conspiratorially to Joyce: “We always say we’re looking for fresh faces, but in reality the easier it is to classify you as a certain “look”

the more readily casting people can slot you.”

“You mean pigeonhole me,” Joyce said. But she moderated her tone to one of interest.

“Yes. No!” the woman corrected herself. “Look, who knows from this if you can act. Eventually that will be very important, I promise you. All I’m saying is to get that far you have to have a certain look.”

Joyce thanked the woman, who sounded very sincere. She said that Joyce’s information would be kept on file and she would be asked to read for suitable parts. Joyce also asked to be considered for work as an extra, and that was noted on her resume.

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The reception area was nearly empty when she emerged, and Joyce headed off to her next stop, the open call for the industrial show.

There, harried assistants were handing out numbers and scheduling auditions, and Joyce was able to choose a time to come back.

She left her photo and resume and signed up for 2:10 that afternoon. Joyce noted that she would have all of 10 minutes to impress whoever was putting the show together.

The product being glorified was a line of pre-fabricated kitchen cabinets. At least I don’t have to come up with songs about pine and maple, she thought. Hopefully, just singing them will be enough.

A dash across Seventh Avenue brought her to the office of the person who advertised as “looking for talent” without specifying what for.

Joyce was full of trepidation riding up in the elevator. What if she had misunderstood the ad and was about to look foolish?

What if she was getting involved in something shady?

Debbie hadn’t been sure that this ad was on the up and up, but 56

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she did say that “artist’s representatives” did advertise for new clients, and often took people on based on a feeling they’d find work.

The man she found inside the tiny office was fat and balding, and reminded Joyce of nothing as much as the child’s toy “Mr.

Potato Head.” That toy came complete with outsized black-rimmed glasses, large jug ears and bushy eyebrows—accessories this man was already equipped with.

There was an unsavory air about the whole situation. The posters behind his desk were of “straight-to-video” slasher movies and teen sex comedies.

The office looked a little too studied—as if a set designer had come in and tried to create an agent’s office for a stock scene.

Even the magazines and trade papers that were left lying around didn’t look casually tossed where they ended up. Rather it looked as if someone had carefully considered how to arrange them for the greatest effect.

Joyce’s uneasiness grew after the man extended a handful of pudgy fingers and flashy jewelry and invited her to sit down.

He quickly dismissed the possibility of representing her, because Joyce did not yet have a union card and could not get into closed auditions.

But as she stood to go, the “agent” pretended to have a sudden thought. He literally slapped himself on his shiny forehead in exaggerated surprise.

Jeez, I’m a better actor than this guy, Joyce thought to herself.

But she grew interested in spite of herself when the man said that he could find her work at trade shows and conventions.

“You’d just have to stand next to a sports car or something and smile. You can do that, can’t you?” the sleazebag said.

“Sure,” Joyce said doubtfully. “Isn’t that modeling work? Why wouldn’t a modeling agency handle that kind of booking?”

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“I send girls over to the hotels all the time,” the guy said. “You don’t mind standing around in a bathing suit, do you?”

“I guess not,” Joyce said. Her internal alarm was slow going off.

“How about in a Catholic girls’ school uniform? You know, with the plaid skirt and knee socks and loafers. Some of these jobs, they go for that. You’ve worn that lots of times I bet.”

“Not since I was 12,” Joyce said. Her warning system was ringing in her ears, signaling a stage-three jerk alert.

The guy leered at her then, showing a row of yellow teeth, and invited her to hike up her skirt. Joyce left so fast her clattering footsteps were still echoing on the stairs when she reached the street.

Joyce tried to examine her feelings as she walked back to the apartment. She was upset about the encounter, and annoyed that it took her so long to catch on. She’d had her suspicions going in, but wanted to believe things were legitimate.

Mostly, she decided, the whole thing was pretty funny. What a pathetic loser. If only all the dangers she would face in her life would be so clear, Joyce thought.

Amelia was glad to see her mistress when Joyce got home. She badly needed to be walked. The puppy was used to coming and going as she pleased through her own opening in the Waszlewski’s front door.

“City living doesn’t agree with you, huh girl?” Joyce cooed to her dog as they walked. “Maybe I’ll send you home Sunday with Doug, if he can get you on the bus.”

There were a few minutes before she had to meet Doug for lunch, so Joyce unsnapped Amelia’s leash and let her run in a little park.