Someday, Someday, Maybe (13 page)

I wonder if Barney remembers it’s our very first meeting ever.

“Um, no?”

“Wonderful actress, a DOLL, a real cut-up.” Wheeze, rattle, gasp, then: “They called me from the Coast one time, looking for a ‘Ruth Buzzi TYPE’ for a new variety show, and I told them, I can do better than that, I’ve got the real thing! I represent RUTH BUZZI. They said they’d call back. They never called. She didn’t get the job. TRUE STORY. Someday, dear, I predict they’ll be asking me for a type like Frances Banks. Now tell me, what is it you picture for yourself in this terrible business?”

It’s been a long time since anyone asked me that, and I feel suddenly shy. I’m embarrassed to tell a stranger, even a kind one, all that I’ve been hoping for.

“What a dumb question I’m asking! It’s torture telling someone what you want when you don’t have it yet, isn’t it?” Barney says. “How are you supposed to know yet, am I RIGHT?”

That makes me laugh. “Yes!”

“As my father, the great Broadway director Irving Sparks, always used to say: ‘We all have to start somewhere.’ So start somewhere, anywhere, and give me an idea of what it is you’d like to do. Tell me EVERYTHING. What is your DREAM?”

“My dream? I guess, honestly, I just want … to … to work. I really want to work. Here, mostly, in New York. In the theater. That’s what I’ve pictured.”

“Theater is wonderful, I agree, although I think you have a face for film, too,” he says, slapping himself on the chest to help a few coughs escape. “Theater WAS wonderful, IF you were Ethel Merman back in the day. Now SHE had a paycheck. Theater is NOT wonderful today, IF you want to eat, or have a grand apartment, but HEY! Who am I to argue? I’m here to help YOU.”

I feel a surge of pride at Barney’s compliment. “I have a face for film” is the kind of thing I could imagine Penelope saying easily about herself, but I’d never dare.

“Now listen, my dear, I have a good feeling about what I saw onstage that night, and I would like to help you get started. SO.” He claps his hands together once, for emphasis, as if he’s just pulled a rabbit out of his hat and wants to make sure the audience sees it.

I’m stunned.

He just said he wants to work with me. I thought it would be so much harder to get anyone in the professional world to say that, ever. An actual real live agent wants to represent me.

I don’t have to do this alone.

I’m shocked.

“What? Is that … but … really?”

“Yes, dear, really. My father, the great Broadway director Irving Sparks, always said: ‘Cream rises to the top.’ You, my dear, will rise. AT SOME POINT. Who can say when? THAT is a matter of timing, and luck, and how badly you get in your own way, BUT. There you have it. I know CREAM when I see it.”

More than anything, I want to say yes. I have a gut feeling about Barney Sparks that tells me he’s the one for me. But something is holding me back. It would be so easy to say yes and leave this room with an agent. Almost too easy. I look around the room, and the walls of old scripts and Playbills that seemed warm and friendly when I first came in now look cluttered and shabby. The leather on the arms of this giant lumpy chair is worn thin, the stuffing is peeking through one of the seams, and the sunlight streaming through the window is cloudy with dust.

I stammer a bit.

“You know, thank you so much, but this is my first, that is, it’s all so new, and—”

“You want to think about it. You have other meetings. That’s wonderful, dear. You just give me a call whenever you’re ready.”

I lurch up from the depths of the giant armchair and clumsily gather my stuff. The meeting is clearly over, but I don’t want to leave yet. Something is holding me back, and I pause for a beat in the doorway.

“You all right, dear?” Barney booms. “You have other questions you’d like to ask?”

“Oh no, thank you. I just wanted to say thank you again. Also, I guess I was wondering if you have any advice for me?”

“Wonderful question. I’ve been around a long time. I’m full of advice. A few things I always tell my actors, should you become one of my actors.”

“Yes?”

“My father, the great Broadway director Irving Sparks, always said: ‘Don’t tell stories of a job you almost got. Learn from a loss and don’t dwell on it. Move on.’ ”

“Okay. Makes sense.”

“Also, I’ve found, when you’re starting out, it helps to keep a written record somewhere of your auditions. Write down who you met and how you felt about it. Write down what went wrong or right. Get yourself one of those, what are they called? Mrs. Sparks has one. A fax.”

“A Filofax?”

“That.”

“I’ve already got one!”

“Well, look at YOU,” he says, beaming. “And dear, if you should someday become famous, don’t write a cookbook.”

“Um. Okay.”

“Not a deal-breaker, if you’re some sort of Julia Child—type person. Just a pet peeve of mine. Actors should ACT. Not sell perfume, or write cookbooks.”

I don’t know what to do with this information.

“Okay!” I say brightly. “Then I’ll keep my baked ziti to myself.”

I’ve never made baked ziti in my life, and with more time I probably could have thought of a more innately funny food, but for some reason it makes Barney Sparks laugh anyway. “Baked ziti! Sounds HORRIBLE!”

His wheezing guffaw follows me down the stairs.

W
hen I get home from the club that night around two
A.M.
, Dan is on the sofa with a beer balanced between his knees and a black-and-white movie playing on the TV.

“Let me guess—Fellini’s
8½
?” I say, letting my messenger bag slide off my shoulder onto the floor by the front door. I’m happy someone’s up, happy not to come home to a darkened house after the long day I’ve had.

“Very good!” he says, looking impressed.

“It’s not that hard to recognize—you must’ve rented it five times already this month.”

“I know,” he says, smiling sheepishly. “I hope I’m not driving you guys crazy. Jane was watching it for a while but gave up and went to sleep. She said the last time she sat through the whole thing she dreamt she was eaten by her pillow. It’s almost over—want to watch the end with me?”

I plop down beside Dan on the couch, and take off my shoes to give my aching feet some relief. “It’s about a director making a sci-fi movie, right? Is that why you like it so much?”

“Well, it’s about a director who’s in crisis: he’s blocked artistically, he’s lost all interest in the movie he’s making, and his personal life is a shambles. The fact that he’s making a science-fiction movie is supposed to show that he’s lost all creativity. He’s looking for meaning in his life and his art.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Yup. Just the plain old, everyday quest for the meaning of life.”

A beautiful actress wearing glasses says something to the director, played by Marcello Mastroianni. Her mouth keeps moving even after her voice has stopped.

“The sync seems off.”

“It was the style of Italian filmmakers of the day to dub all the dialogue in later,” Dan explains, eyes still pinned to the screen. “And since they weren’t concerned about recording the sound live, Fellini famously played loud music for the actors during the scenes to inspire them, and had the actors speak generic lines that he replaced later when he decided what the real ones should be. That’s why their mouths don’t match what they’re saying, but also why the movement is so fluid. They are actually, at times, dancing to music.”

“How beautiful!”

On a white sand beach, a procession of the characters from the film mixed in with people dressed as circus performers and clowns, all wearing white, parade by. Then the scene shifts abruptly to a circus ring, empty except for the child who played the young Marcello Mastroianni, who plays the flute as the spotlight on him fades to black. The End.

“Huh,” I say, baffled.

“The end is supposed to show that he’s come to terms with who he is—it’s supposed to show he’s been healed.”

“Huh,” I say again.

“I know. Fellini can be abstract,” Dan says, eyes gleaming. “Watch it with me from the beginning sometime.”

“I will.” I smile back at him, noticing for the first time the flecks of green in his brown eyes. The room seems too dark and quiet suddenly, and we’re sitting too close together on the sofa without the glow of the screen and the sound of the movie in the background to keep us company. I stand up quickly and pick up my shoes from the floor. “I should get to sleep.”

“Sure. Me too,” Dan says, rising and clicking off the TV and the VCR. “Wait—you had that meeting today, right?”

“Yep.”

“How did it go?”

“It was good, really good, actually. But I have nothing to compare it to yet, and I think I should go through the process, you know? So I’m going to take a beat, and, you know, keep my options open.”

I sound odd to myself, as if I’m playing the part of a professional actress who has meetings all the time and is sort of blasé about them. I loved Barney Sparks, I want to tell Dan, but I’m suspicious of anything that seems too easy. I’m not sure why I can’t say that now, and not sure why I didn’t jump at the chance to say yes in Barney’s office.

It feels like I’m an actor in an Italian movie from the ’60s, saying the placeholder lines into the camera, waiting for the real ones that come later.

10
 

Joe Melville, senior agent at Absolute Artists, has only one opening, at three thirty on Friday. Then he goes to London to visit a client on location, and his next appointment isn’t for at least another two weeks. At least that’s what the girl with the British accent and clipped tone told me over the phone. I don’t want to wait. Everything could change by then. Joe Melville might forget all about me by then.

But I’m supposed to be at the club at four thirty on Friday. I need my Friday shift—I need the money—but if you’re even one minute late for a shift, Herb sends you home and calls one of the servers he keeps on call for the night. It’s a brutal setup, but it ensures that we’re always on time and Herb is never understaffed.

Still, I figure I have a shot with Herb if I tell him the situation up front.

“Herb, there’s a slight—and I mean very slight—chance that I will be a few, a very few, minutes late on Friday, because I have a big meeting with a really big agency.” I don’t usually brag like that, but sometimes Herb is impressed by that sort of stuff. He likes taking credit for all the people who’ve come through the club, people he treated like shit but then gets sentimental about after they’ve become successful.

“If you already know you’re going to be late, I have to take your shift, Franny,” he says sternly.

“No, no, I don’t know for sure that I’m going to be late. That’s what I’m saying. I probably won’t be, Herb—it’s only a chance.”

“That’s a chance I can’t take.”

Herb watches a lot of cop shows.

“Forget it,” I sigh. “I shouldn’t have even said anything. I’ll be on time.”

“Ricky!” Herb yells to my waiter buddy Ricky, who’s busy filling up salt and pepper shakers, “Take Franny’s shift on Friday.”

“Herb!” I’m panicking now. I really need the shift. “No. Forget it, I said. Never mind. I’ll be here, I swear. I’ll leave in plenty of time.”

The comics at the bar—the ones who still drink—overheard the whole thing and they chime in, calling Herb an asshole to his face and buying me a shot of tequila, which they insist I do in front of him. The only people Herb lets boss him around are the comics who still drink, because they’re the funniest and he doesn’t want them to turn sober. Herb tries to scare them, puffing up his chest and announcing, “I’m the boss around here,” but his voice comes out high and squeaky and that only makes them laugh, so finally he gives up, retreating to his office in the basement.

T
he offices of Absolute Artists are on the thirty-second floor of a sleek glass high-rise building on 56th Street near Fifth Avenue, in the middle of countless stores and apartments I could never afford. I come to this part of town only once in a while to go to Central Park, although I like our park in Brooklyn just as much. The streets are wider here and the buildings are much taller than downtown, and lots of people are wearing suits and carrying briefcases and crossing the street dangerously in the middle of the block. It takes me a minute to figure out west from east, but I finally manage to find the building, where I have to sign in with a guard and write down the time and the name of the agency in a huge book in the lobby.

The guard calls up and says my name to someone on the other end. I’m nervous while I wait to be approved, as if I’m sneaking in instead of going to an appointment. It reminds me of when I was sixteen and trying to get into a bar in East Norwalk with a fake ID. I’d spent the whole ride in the car memorizing Joyce Antonio’s older sister’s birthday, but when instead of asking my birthday, the bouncer asked me, “What’s your sign?” I was caught.

But this guard doesn’t throw me out. He hands me a paper badge with my name printed on it and says yes, it’s okay for me to go up.

The elevator empties out around the twentieth floor, so I quickly try to use the smoked mirror walls to check my face and hair and outfit. I’m wearing my black stretchy turtleneck with my black wool miniskirt, black tights, and Doc Martens lace-up boots, and now I can see in the reflection in the elevator mirror that the skirt is too short. I try to pull it down, but then my sweater isn’t long enough, and if I pull the skirt down to where it looks better, an inch of my stomach shows.