“Well, you’ll have to give me the scoop when you’re done. I’m so far back in line they didn’t bother giving me a number.”
“Cool, I’ll let you know,” the woman said, with an air of detachment that implied she probably wouldn’t. Then she turned back to the script in her hands, signaling the end of their brief, transactional interaction.
The minutes passed slowly, the women coming and going at irregular intervals with no pattern Rose could discern. Why twenty minutes for one and three for another? Why did that woman look elated and the next like a child who had dropped an ice cream cone in the sand? In the windowless room, Rose couldn’t watch the sun set over her first day as an up-and-coming artist, but she felt it. Tick, tick, tick.
Finally, mercifully, the room was empty save for Rose and a few fellow stragglers. By that point, she felt such a kinship with them she was about ready to invite everyone back to her basement apartment for drinks. “Rose Martin!” a voice called. Rose shot up out of her chair.
“Here!” she called back. One of the remaining women snickered. Rose mentally struck her from the invite list.
A woman with a sharp pixie cut waved her in. “Honestly, good for you,” she said. “I don’t think I would have waited. This has been a fuckingday.”
The audition room was nearly as sterile as the holding pen. Two casting directors sat behind a folding table in the back of the room. One flashed Rose an easy smile that did not quite reach his eyes while the other would not meet Rose’s gaze, tracking somewhere around her collarbone or lower. “Whenever you’re ready,” said the one with the smile.
She centered herself in the room, took a breath, and began. “Why do you say that you have kissed the ground I walked on? You should kill me rather. I am so tired. If only I could rest—rest.” Her breath caught slightly on thet. She kept going. “I am a seagull—no—no, I am an actress.”
“Thank you,” said the one staring straight at her chest. “That’s all we need.”
Rose blinked. It was over? She’d only just begun. “Oh, I was just—”
“Thanks,” he repeated.
Rose nodded mechanically. “Thank you for your time,” she said, only because there was nothing elsetosay and she felt she should at least mark the moment. The instant she rounded the corner, she leaned against the holding pen’s cool wall, sliding down until she met floor. How many minutes had she lasted? One? Two? It couldn’t possibly have been the shortest audition of the day, could it? Rose had faced rejection, of course, but nothing like this. Nobody had ever stopped her one-tenth of the way through a monologue—though now she wished they had. Had no one thought to prepare her for the cruel indifference of the world of professional theater?
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a small mercy, she realized. Had she been in there when it happened, she would have been laughed out of the room rather than simply dismissed. “Landon,” she said in a whisper. “Give me three minutes.” Rose flew past the final straggler, who could not possibly fail any worse than she had, past the woman with the clipboard and the piles of empty water bottles, down the stairs and out the door, and took an enormous gulp of air. Then, she dialed his number.
“Hey,” she said.
“Are you okay?” He sounded worried.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Physically I am completely fine.”
“Well, I didn’t just mean physically, but that’s a relief.”
Rose kicked a hunk of gravel loose and watched it fly into a gutter. “What if I’ve made a huge mistake?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if I’m no good?”
Landon chuckled. “You’re good. And you know you’re good.”
“Okay, well, what if I’m justVermontgood.”
“You can’t know that after one audition.”
So why did Rose feel like she could? “They barely let me finish a sentence, Landon.”
He paused a moment. “Do you want me to fight them? I mean it. Say the word.”
The thought was silly enough to drag Rose out of her darkness, at least temporarily. “I do not.” She lowered her voice. “Can I tell you something awful?”
“Always.”
“The girl next to me at the audition told me that there was a rumor going around that the casting directors were handsy.”
“Okay, urge to fight reinstated.”
“I haven’t even told you the awful part,” Rose said. “When I left the room after a minute in there, maybe two if I factor in travel time, I thought maybe if I’d dressed differently—”
