The Voiceover Artist (14 page)

“No.”

Not a savvy answer, but I'm not surprised.

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Let me lay out the ground rules for you, Simon.”

Leaning forward, I narrow my eyes and turn my head just slightly, so that my left eye is closer to him than the right. This is a routine I have developed over the years to make one thing clear: none of what I'm about to say is a joke.

“I'll need you on call,” I say, “like a surgeon, between
8
a.m. and
5
p.m., Monday through Friday. You're available unless you've told me forty-eight hours in advance that you're not. Can you agree to that?”

After another little headshake, Simon says, “Yes.”

“If I call you with a job, I don't want to hear about your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your dying grandmother. I want to hear you say, ‘Yes.' And saying ‘yes' means that you'll be at the session in perfect voice, at least ten minutes before your call time. Can you agree to that?”

“Yes,” he says. “I can.”

I ask myself if I believe him, and I do. “Good.”

I give him a quick, fake smile, thinking he will take it as a sign he can relax a little now. He doesn't seem at all relieved.

“Is this going about how you thought it would go?” I ask.

He does that head thing again.

“I had no idea how this would go,” he says.

This makes me laugh out loud. “Good answer.”

I decide I'm beginning to like Simon Davies but banish my next thought as soon as it occurs: the last artist I'd signed who possessed Simon's exceptional vocal skill—the talent to place each word in the listener's ear with a jeweler's gentle precision—was Larry Sellers.

“You'll be billed out at $
150
an hour for non-union sessions and at scale for union radio and television work,” I say. “Until we get you in the union, that is. Then we'll push for more than scale. No matter what your hourly is, we charge the agencies an additional fifteen percent, so Skyline's fee doesn't dip into yours. Our fifteen percent of any residuals comes out of your earnings.”

“So, do I pay you?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I pay you. All your payments are made out to the agency. We take out your fee and deposit the rest into your bank account. Taxes are your responsibility. If you've got no money to pay them when they come due, don't come to me. The best advice I can give you is to think of every $
150
as $
100
and move the difference into an account you don't touch until tax time. Is this all making sense?”

“I think so,” Simon says.

“Good.”

He doesn't sound too sure, but I can't get myself interested in pinning down his misunderstanding. I'm on a roll.

I lift two thin, stapled documents from a stack of white paper striped with the edges of pink and yellow carbons and hand the documents to Simon.

“This is your contract,” I say. “One copy is mine, the other is yours. It's a standard contract, the one all our new talent signs. Show it to a lawyer if you like, but if he knows anything about the voiceover business, he'll tell you it's more than fair.”

Most of my new clients are so grateful to be with Skyline that they sign whatever I give them right away. But every once in a while I get one, like Simon, who can't ignore a piece of advice some well-meaning boss or grandfather gave him:
“Never sign anything without reading it first.”

Do these people actually believe that they understand what they're reading? That they can really pick out the places where they might be getting fucked? The advice should be,
“Never sign anything without going to law school first.”
Then reading a contract might be worth the time it takes.

I give Simon a moment to review the contract and, while he does, I scan it myself. A few phrases of the language my attorney and I have crafted—“exclusive representation,” “one tenth of all residual payments,” “binding until such time that the AGENCY terminates”—come together as I drag my eyes across them. Contracts: what good are they, really? They can't hold together what's falling apart. Larry's contract didn't keep him with Skyline, and nothing else I'd done had kept him with me.

I decide Simon has had enough time. “Any questions?”

He wiggles his head and asks, “What is the length of this contract?”

The contract's duration is right there in the document—the Legal Eagle has missed it. But the question isn't a bad one, and I wonder if Simon has just a little more savvy than I've given him credit for.

“A year from now, we'd need to sit down, see if everyone is happy, and modify or renew the contract.”

Then Simon takes a pen from the Mason jar on my desk, signs both copies of the contract on his right thigh, and hands them back to me.

“Very good,” I say.

I sign and date both copies and hand one back to Simon, who rolls it into an uneven cylinder.

“I thought about putting some music behind your demo,” I say, “but I think it's fine, for now, as it is. It'll be up on our website in a day or two. If it hasn't gotten you any work in three months, we'll have you record something else.”

At the mention of three months without work, Simon begins to look a little sick.

Larry never liked waiting, either.

Every new client shows up in my office believing I'm the gatekeeper, that once they're in with me, they'll have all the work they can handle. I use that myth to get the contract signed, and then I start debunking it. I don't ruin the moment by outlining the stark reality that Simon would make more money waiting tables than he will as a first-year voiceover artist. But I start ratcheting down the expectations. I don't want to get a phone call from a kid who's left his steady job and is wondering why the gatekeeper hasn't let him through the gate.

“How does all that sound?”

I give Simon a smile—a real one, this time—to show him that, my three-month warning notwithstanding, I believe I'll find him some work. Eventually.

“Good,” he says.

“Well,” I say, “sounding good is our business.”

It's a corny line I've used for years, but it seems to give Simon a thrill. I extend my hand to Simon, and he stands to take it.

“I'll be in touch, Simon.”

“Okay,” he says. “Thank you.”

I put my glasses on and scan down my list of phone calls to make. When I look up again, Simon is still in my office, standing beside the door, staring at the dead plant on my file cabinet.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Is that Larry Sellers?”

My pulse picks up—and not in a good way—at the mention of Larry's name. I realize then that Simon isn't looking at the withered plant but at that goddamned photo of Larry and me, which is still where I left it years ago. The thought that I deserve the sick feeling in my gut—that I have nothing but my own weakness to blame—prompts me to pull the feeling close, as if burying my face in my regret will teach me a lesson I have always needed to learn.

I haven't answered Simon's first question when, still staring at the photograph, he asks another.

“Is he your client?”

“Not anymore.”

“He left the agency?”

The disappointment in his voice annoys me. “Some years ago, yes.” Then I start to worry that I've signed Larry's nephew or something. “How do you know Larry Sellers?”

“I don't,” Simon says. “But I admire his work. Especially for Jewel Foods.”

With that, I've had all of Simon's earnestness I can take.

“Goodbye, Simon.”

He turns to me, and I give him a hard look that betrays none of my inner churning and sends a clear, unspoken message:
Get out.

His head shakes a couple of times as he backs out of the office. Then he smiles and says, “Thanks again for your time.”

And he's gone.

I spend the rest of the afternoon making the calls on my list, and I push even harder than usual to get my people paid
now
. The bullying I do probably costs me more money in the long run than I manage to collect over these couple of hours, but I don't give a shit. Getting what I want, down to the second and the cent, feels absolutely necessary.

A little after five, I hear people saying goodbye to each other down the hall, and a few women pass my office with their summer jackets over their arms and purses over their shoulders. When the low-level bustle of closing time goes silent, I pour myself a few fingers of vodka and drink it down. I pour another one. Then I pick a bubble-cushioned envelope off the top of the stack in my inbox. I slide my letter-opener into the narrow gap between the body of the envelope and its adhesive flap and drag the blade across the opening. Leaving the cover letter inside, I pull out a thin plastic case that protects an unmarked CD. I put the CD in my player and press play. A man clears his throat twice, on mic. Then he begins speaking over a recording of an actual radio commercial for the American Red Cross. Beneath the man's reed-thin tenor, I can hear Morgan Freeman doing the spot as it should be done. When this audition is over, I see that my vodka is gone and fix myself another, keeping the bottle tilted until the drops thrown up by my pour leap over the rim of my mug and dot the papers around it.

I'm in the middle of the day's seventh demo when my pride, having clung to driftwood for years, finally goes under. I pick up the phone and dial the number I still know by heart. With the first ring, my pride resurfaces, gasping for air, dredging up an anxiety for which I've never found the words until now: that Larry was always enough for me, and I was never enough for Larry. I listen to the second ring and the third, hoping to God he doesn't answer, but as the fourth ring purrs in my ear, I want nothing more than to hear the voice of Larry Sellers—that voice!—speaking only to me.

6

 

Simon

 

AT FIRST, THE
waiting wasn't so bad. Getting an agent had taken only two weeks, and Elaine, the agent who signed me, had represented Larry Sellers. These were good reasons to wait for work with expectation it would arrive shortly.

Some people quit their day job when they get what they think is their big break. I didn't have a day job, but the day after I signed with Skyline Talent, I called Helen, the liturgical coordinator at St. Asella's.

“This is Simon Davies,” I said.

“Who?”

I waggled. “Simon Davies. I was the lector the past two weeks?”

“Oh, yes,” Helen says. “What can I do for you, Simon?”

“I'm calling to say that, unfortunately, I won't be able to continue lectoring at St. Asella's.”

I did not say that I would never again so much as set foot in that decaying little church, but that's what I meant.

“You're going over to Old St. Stephen's, aren't you.”

“No, no, that's not it. There's an illness in my family.”

This was not a total lie. My mother's illness had killed her, and I told myself that if she were alive to hear some of what I was feeling in the fallout of the humiliating experience I'd had at St. Asella's the day before—not during mass, but after it—I might have found it within myself to overcome my embarrassment and hard feelings, stand up before the strangers and misfits of St. Asella's, and do what I had committed to do. But my mother was dead, and I couldn't find what I needed without her
.

“Oh, I see,” Helen said. “Well, I'm certainly sorry to hear that. I'll update the schedule and see if I can find a replacement for this Sunday.”

Helen does not pry about the family illness and does not mention the six-month lectoring commitment I'd signed. Perhaps she'd learned the hard way that pressing a lector into service makes for bad liturgy.

“Thanks very much,” I said. “I'm sorry for the inconvenience.”

“That's all right. Bye now.”

I flipped my phone closed, tossed it onto the couch, and almost immediately, began waiting again for the damn thing to ring.

 

•••

 

THREE DAYS BEFORE
—a Sunday, my second at St. Asella's—I was standing at the back of the church with the gospel book under my arm as people entered one or two at a time, in silence, through the three sets of wooden double doors to my left. As they found their way to seats that maximized the distance between themselves and their fellow parishioners, I wondered why any of these people bothered to come to this decrepit church. I had an easy answer to that question for the many among them who seemed, as I had been doomed to be before rebuilding my voice, isolated and odd: I assumed they had nowhere else to go, that they were taking refuge in the one place so desperate for bodies that they would never be turned away. The strangeness of these people—their exile from the world—stirred up a defensive revulsion.

That's not me,
I told myself.
Not anymore.

Then I saw a woman who was everything the misfits of St. Asella's were not. For one thing, she was beautiful. Her skin had been bronzed in the sun, and the curls in her deep brown hair gleamed when she passed through the beams of the sanctuary's overhead spot-lamps. A cotton dress met her body at its curves as she made her way past soot-covered, stained-glass windows toward the back of the church, hugging a silk shawl around her shoulders. And there was more to this woman than her beauty. People seemed drawn to her. They stood up in their pews and shuffled to the aisle to greet her with a hug or a handshake, or whisper a few words to her, before she moved on down the side aisle. An old woman with a four-footed cane—I recognized her from my first Sunday at St. Asella's—interrupted the slow progress that she and her doddering husband had been making toward a front pew to exchange pleasantries with her. What was most striking, though, as I watched the younger woman turn the corner around the last row of pews, was her projection of a confidence that seemed impossibly complete.

This was someone with a place in the world.

I had expected her to pass me on her way to wherever she was headed, but the woman stopped and stood immediately next to me on the church's back wall. The fine wrinkles around her eyes suggested that she was some number of years older than me—in her mid-thirties, maybe. The scent of her, carried on the air she'd moved on her walk, was floral but so subtle that it left me wondering if she was wearing any perfume at all.

I waggled—twice—and prepared to hand over the Book of Gospels. “I'm sorry,” I said, “are you lectoring today?”

“No,” she said, smiling. “That heavy book is all yours.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

“I don't think we've met,” she said, holding out her right hand in front of me. “Catherine Ferrán.”

She pronounced the surname with an accent I supposed was Spanish and a meticulousness I could appreciate in any language.

“Simon Davies.”

“Nice to meet you, Simon. Are you new?”

“Yes.” I waggled and nodded. “Very.”

“Well, welcome,” Catherine said.

“Thank you. So, you're not a lector?”

Catherine shook her head. The organ lowed from the choir loft, as if she'd cued it. “I'm the cantor,” she said. “I'll walk up right behind you.”

There had been no cantor—no singing at all—during the first mirthless mass I'd attended at St. Asella's. As I processed toward the altar on that second Sunday, Catherine's singing at my back—clear-voiced and pleasant, giving no clear indications of professional training—was a dog whistle for the part of me that wanted a place in the world. It took all the restraint I could muster not to turn around, watch and listen as Catherine passed, and follow her wherever she went. Sweat pricked through the pores of my upper lip at the thought that Catherine might lump me in with the misfits and oddballs of St. Asella's. What I wanted was for Catherine to see me as someone who would have a place in the world, and soon—not someone like
them
, but someone like
her
.

After mass, I stood within earshot beneath the sparse shade of a young ash tree while a rag-tag gathering of old, lonely men and strange women took their turns asking Catherine to recount her month-long trip to Morocco. She spoke to each one of them with patience and charm. After waiting his turn for about ten minutes, an old man stammered at Catherine, nervously worked the brim of a rumpled felt hat through his hands. I got the idea that Catherine was the only woman—maybe the only person—to whom this man would speak for some time.

The last person (besides me) waiting to chat with Catherine was an older woman. Her fine, curly gray hair was pressed flat where she'd slept on it. The skin around her eyes was red and swollen and her mouth was loosely pursed, as if the muscles that do the pursing were nearly exhausted.

Catherine, facing away from me, shook her head as she asked the older woman something—I didn't hear what. As her brittle, trebly voice scattered in the summer breeze, I could pick out only part of the older woman's response, a name:
Rose Marie.

Then the two of them embraced in a way that flipped all of my assumptions on their head: the older woman was soothing
Catherine
, stroking her back and whispering consolations through her tired lips. When they pulled away, the older woman smiled and squeezed Catherine's hand. She rooted in her purse for a pen and scribbled something on the back of a tattered envelope. Returning the pen to her purse, she pulled out a tissue and gave it to Catherine. Then the older woman walked away, toward the parking lot on Franklin Street.

Catherine turned toward the crumbling stone of the church steps and blew her nose into the tissue. I saw then that she was crying.

Standing there, watching Catherine cry, felt wrong somehow. I decided to leave, but before I could, Catherine caught sight of me. I froze. She didn't seem surprised to see me.

Taking just one step toward her, I asked, “Are you all right?”

With her eyes on the steps, Catherine said, “Her name is Jeanne.” She balled the tissue into her fist. “She's lived with her sister, Rose Marie, for years, since Rose Marie's husband died. They go everywhere together. They take bus tours all over the Midwest. This was the first time I'd seen Jeanne without Rose Marie in months. So I asked, ‘Where's Rose Marie?'”

Catherine sniffed, rolled her eyes skyward, and shook her head. Keeping my distance had begun to feel more rude than respectful, so I took another few steps toward her.

“And Jeanne tells me,” Catherine continued, “that Rose Marie was diagnosed with cancer three weeks ago and given three months to live—maybe less. She's at home now. In horrific pain. And Jeanne says to me, ‘I'm afraid to be alone.' And before I can say anything that helps”—Catherine looked at me, as if she owed me an explanation—“I just started crying.” Then she stomped her right heel against the cement and said, “Somebody should have
told
me! I've been home for days. I could have done something for her by now!”

As I listened, wondering what to say, I recalled that in the moment I'd felt closest to Brittany, I hadn't needed to say anything at all. Given the sadness of Jeanne's story, I felt a little guilty at my excitement that Catherine was sharing it with me.

“I need to get my purse,” she said.

What I heard was Catherine asking me to wait for her.

“Okay,” I said.

Catherine hurried away down the gangway, leaving me alone in front of the church. Feeling the heat and my nerves, I moved back into the shade of the ash tree. I glanced over my shoulder at Bartlett Street and waggled. I watched the blurry shadows of the tree branches swaying and I waggled again. I had little idea what, if anything, I was going to say, but I wanted my voice at the ready.

When she walked out from behind one of the church's heavy oaken doors, Catherine was smiling. Her eyes were dry, and she was carrying herself with the confidence I'd noticed when I first laid eyes on her.

“Hi,” she said, stepping carefully down the steps in her nude heels.

“Hello.”

“I'm sorry about all that.”

I shook my head and waggled. “You shouldn't be.”

She nodded. “So, how are you?”

“I'm fine. Good.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” Catherine said.

With this bit of small talk, I could feel Catherine closing the door to the closeness we had shared a moment before. But I wasn't ready to go home yet.

“Are you going this way?” I said, pointing east, toward the lakefront.

“Yes,” Catherine said.

Just like that, we were walking together. We crossed Franklin Street in the striped shadow of the El tracks. The shawl that had covered her shoulders during mass had slipped down around her waist. The only ring on either hand was a chunky piece of opaque, pale green plastic on an index finger.

“People really love you here,” I said.

She laughed. “It's not like this every week. I've been gone a while.”

“Are you glad to be back?”

Catherine tilted her head just slightly. “Mostly.”

“It sounds like that woman you were talking to—”

“Jeanne.”

“Jeanne,” I repeated. “It sounds like she's having a rough time.”

Catherine inhaled deeply through her nose. “Rose Marie is taking all the chemo and radiation the doctor will give her. Jeanne's worried the treatment will kill her before the cancer does.” Catherine shook her head. “She must be terrified.”

“My mother died of cancer,” I blurted.

“Oh,” Catherine said. “I'm sorry.”

“She was diagnosed at stage four, so she didn't want any radiation or chemo,” I said. “She just let the cancer do its work.”

Catherine waited a beat. “Did you try to convince her to get treatment?”

I shook my head. “No.”

I didn't tell Catherine that I'd wanted desperately to make an argument for treatment, an argument that would have required more nuance than my full range of nods, headshakes and gestures could have communicated. In the end, I'd made no argument. I'd just watched her die.

I missed my mother right then. I like to think that it's because I missed my mother that I decided, despite the fact that we'd just met and that she'd just been crying, that I'd ask Catherine to have lunch with me.

“Once more people at St. Asella's find out about Rose Marie's diagnosis,” Catherine said, “Jeanne is going to have a lot of help. She won't cook or clean for weeks.”

I smiled at what I'd assumed was a kind of joke—how could the people of St. Asella's help Jeanne when they were scarcely able to help themselves? But when I glanced at Catherine, I saw no sign that she was kidding around.