The Fat Lady Sings by Charlie Lovett Page B

listening to someone else's massage. So when you leave, and then she leaves, I step out and I am just stretching because ninety minutes standing still on a tile floor is not great for my back -- since I'm not thin or perky -- and my sweaty foot slips on the tile and I grab the shower curtain and there is this brief Psycho moment when I hear the rings popping off the rod and I imagine you finding my body sprawled on the floor. But I'm OK. I mean until a second later, when I hear you coming in I'm OK.
    Then I panic and wrap myself up in the shower curtain, which I have to tell you fits a lot better than those towels, and so now here I am. Your two o'clock.
    OK, on the one hand, I think I kind of nailed it. I got all the beats right, and I think I balanced the humor and insecurity pretty well. I even heard laughter coming from the firing squad at a couple of points, which is a good sign. The problem is, I'm afraid they'll think I wasn't acting. I mean, even if they don't know I wrote it, they've got to realize that I'm an insecure fat girl just like the one in the monologue. I didn't exactly show range.
    The singing audition is a blur, because even while I'm singing "Home" from Beauty and the Beast (or sixteen bars of it, anyway) I'm going back over the monologue in my head, trying to figure out if they laughed in the right places, if there's anything I could have done better. By the time someone says, "Thank you very much," I've pretty well convinced myself that all I've proven to them is that I'm crazy enough to do a man's speech from Shakespeare and I can be myself in front of strangers for four minutes. In other words: disaster.
    I stagger back out into the hallway, and it's hard to believe it's only been ten minutes since they called my name. I feel like I'm either gonna faint or throw up, and then I remember that everyone else who's come out that door has looked sick, too, and that makes me feel slightly better, but only slightly.
    Elliot is waiting for me outside the front door of the building. He takes one look at me and wraps me in a hug.
    "I'll bet you were fabulous," he said.
    "You know, I hear banking is a very rewarding career," I say, doing my best to laugh off the feeling that my dream is ending here on this freezing cold sidewalk.
    "Yeah, well, with your math grade, I think you'd better stick to acting," says Elliot.
    I don't know whether to punch him or kiss him, so I just grab his arm and pull him towards the car. "Take me home," I say.
    Elliot points the car towards the interstate and I do my best to forget the fact that I will probably never see this campus again.
    "I heard a rumor something was going on between Roger and Cynthia," I say. "Do you know what the deal is?" I figure I went into the weekend with three problems, one of them has now been dealt with one way or the other (the audition), I might as well start in on the other two (Roger and Cynthia, math class).
    "I wouldn't call it a deal," said Elliot. "Although Roger did say that Cynthia's been kind of coming on to him."
    "Coming on to him how?"
    "I don't know, just being flirty and stuff. You know how girls are around Roger."
    "She's up to something, trust me. She has a plan."
    "Look, Aggie, I know you don't want to believe this, but Cynthia Pirelli is not a diabolical genius."
    "Not a genius, maybe."
    "Didn't you sort of like her before she got cast as Dolly?"
    "And before she bought her boobs."
    "Yeah, well, before all that, didn't you sort of like her?"
    "I wouldn't exactly say I liked her," I say, though in truth I liked her just fine. In fact, she was the only skinny person outside the theatre department who ever gave me the time of day. And she did help a lot with math. But that was before.
    "I know Roger Morton would never go out with me," I say, "but it just bugs me that she gets to spend so much time with him."
    OK, it more than bugs me. As of yesterday, after I heard that Cynthia was into Roger, it officially keeps me awake at night.
    "How