going?” I say, and Uncle Robert turns back and sneers, “We were here at dawn. Shawn is in the first group,” and I go back to my application and finish up.
SPECIAL SKILLS: Lying on applications , I’d love to write, debating further entries: Stealing brother’s ID; Wearing inappropriate clothes to auditions , and finally, Great admirer of children who can do multiple pirouettes . But I decide to be simple and honest.
SPECIAL SKILLS: I thought a pirouette was a pastry, before this audition, and if that’s any indication of how much I could learn in New York, I hope I have a chance to live here.
I take the form to the casting assistant woman and slide it over facedown, hoping she won’t look too closely.
“Okay, Anthony,” she says, “thank you very much.” She takes a pen and writes “#91” on a name tag, the sort of thing my dad might wear to the company Christmas party, once a year when the janitors are actually allowed to mingle with the heart surgeons. “Just put this number on your shirt,” she says, “and think about taking off your hat for the audition.”
My Yankees cap, its unbroken brim hovering over my forehead, had become totally forgotten, another thing that isn’t really me. Another foreign object in a day full of them.
“Wait,” she says, squinting at the application. Oh, Carrie !! She’s discovered the lie.
( Carrie , a nineteen-eighties megaflop musical, was based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, and evidently featured a mile of Spandex and fake pig’s blood, and wasn’t even played as a comedy.)
Frickin’ Carrie !
“Anthony?” she says. “Didn’t you mean to put twelve for your age? Because the numbers are reversed, here—it says ‘twenty-one’—and I think that might not be true.” She picks up a tremendously huge Starbucks drink and sips at it and is acting like she cares, buther eyes are still darting that already-recognizable Manhattan Dart.
“No. I mean yes. I wrote twenty-one.”
“Okay.” Her arm is shaking under the sheer weight of mocha. “Are you here by yourself?”
“Well, look around , there’s hundreds of us,” I think to say, but don’t, managing just, “Uh.”
She takes my application off the clipboard, folding it directly in half, writing a red X —suddenly she has the biggest red Magic Marker I may’ve ever seen, bigger even than her Starbucks—and drops my form into a garbage can below the desk. A garbage can that I swear wasn’t even there a second ago. I have a knack for spotting garbage cans, because I so often end up in them, headfirst.
The hallway is quiet, as still as that horrible elevator ride, and all fifty of these children, lined up against the wall, are gaping directly at me; so are the other million, with their moms and dads and bitter uncles, all watching as this idiot who belongs in Western Pennsylvania makes a total Carrie of himself.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, soft, picking up my bookbag. I pull my new Yankees hat back on so hard, hoping that perhaps some of the magic skills of these brilliant New York kids—these jugglers and flutists—might have rubbed off on stupid Nate Foster. That maybe if I tug this hat on hard enough, down over my entireface, it might make me disappear, or turn me into a rabbit. Ninety bucks Uncle Robert Poppins has a delicious Crock-Pot recipe for stewed rabbit, and a hundred bucks he’d cook me and feed the result to Nephew Shawn.
I’m just about to spin on myself and hightail it to the elevators when the casting assistant woman pins my hand to the table, shouting: “Listen up, everyone,” shooting me daggers and pulling back her blonde-ringlet hair into a nervous twist. She turns her Starbucks over and spills a remaining gulp all over my lie of an application. “Unless you’ve got an adult to vouch for you today, don’t waste our time. This is Broadway ,” and she leans over, pulling the dripping audition-form out from the garbage, and says (as loudly as anyone
SPECIAL SKILLS: Lying on applications , I’d love to write, debating further entries: Stealing brother’s ID; Wearing inappropriate clothes to auditions , and finally, Great admirer of children who can do multiple pirouettes . But I decide to be simple and honest.
SPECIAL SKILLS: I thought a pirouette was a pastry, before this audition, and if that’s any indication of how much I could learn in New York, I hope I have a chance to live here.
I take the form to the casting assistant woman and slide it over facedown, hoping she won’t look too closely.
“Okay, Anthony,” she says, “thank you very much.” She takes a pen and writes “#91” on a name tag, the sort of thing my dad might wear to the company Christmas party, once a year when the janitors are actually allowed to mingle with the heart surgeons. “Just put this number on your shirt,” she says, “and think about taking off your hat for the audition.”
My Yankees cap, its unbroken brim hovering over my forehead, had become totally forgotten, another thing that isn’t really me. Another foreign object in a day full of them.
“Wait,” she says, squinting at the application. Oh, Carrie !! She’s discovered the lie.
( Carrie , a nineteen-eighties megaflop musical, was based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, and evidently featured a mile of Spandex and fake pig’s blood, and wasn’t even played as a comedy.)
Frickin’ Carrie !
“Anthony?” she says. “Didn’t you mean to put twelve for your age? Because the numbers are reversed, here—it says ‘twenty-one’—and I think that might not be true.” She picks up a tremendously huge Starbucks drink and sips at it and is acting like she cares, buther eyes are still darting that already-recognizable Manhattan Dart.
“No. I mean yes. I wrote twenty-one.”
“Okay.” Her arm is shaking under the sheer weight of mocha. “Are you here by yourself?”
“Well, look around , there’s hundreds of us,” I think to say, but don’t, managing just, “Uh.”
She takes my application off the clipboard, folding it directly in half, writing a red X —suddenly she has the biggest red Magic Marker I may’ve ever seen, bigger even than her Starbucks—and drops my form into a garbage can below the desk. A garbage can that I swear wasn’t even there a second ago. I have a knack for spotting garbage cans, because I so often end up in them, headfirst.
The hallway is quiet, as still as that horrible elevator ride, and all fifty of these children, lined up against the wall, are gaping directly at me; so are the other million, with their moms and dads and bitter uncles, all watching as this idiot who belongs in Western Pennsylvania makes a total Carrie of himself.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, soft, picking up my bookbag. I pull my new Yankees hat back on so hard, hoping that perhaps some of the magic skills of these brilliant New York kids—these jugglers and flutists—might have rubbed off on stupid Nate Foster. That maybe if I tug this hat on hard enough, down over my entireface, it might make me disappear, or turn me into a rabbit. Ninety bucks Uncle Robert Poppins has a delicious Crock-Pot recipe for stewed rabbit, and a hundred bucks he’d cook me and feed the result to Nephew Shawn.
I’m just about to spin on myself and hightail it to the elevators when the casting assistant woman pins my hand to the table, shouting: “Listen up, everyone,” shooting me daggers and pulling back her blonde-ringlet hair into a nervous twist. She turns her Starbucks over and spills a remaining gulp all over my lie of an application. “Unless you’ve got an adult to vouch for you today, don’t waste our time. This is Broadway ,” and she leans over, pulling the dripping audition-form out from the garbage, and says (as loudly as anyone
Similar Books
