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Chapter Five
Jasper hustled through the side door of the Shifty Lizard bar, his backpack almost sliding off his shoulder as the door slammed behind him. There was a sharp stitch in his side from the jog he’d made after parking six blocks down the street. He checked his watch. His sister had given him the thing last Christmas because she was convinced he wasn’t aware that time existed. She was wrong on that. He was aware of it. He just wasn’t very good at keeping track of it.
After his shift at the coffee bar had ended, he’d driven over to that theater that was up for sale. That hadn’t been his plan, but somehow he’d found himself heading that way, parking, and getting out. The building had been closer to the apartment he’d lived in with his birth parents than he’d thought. Only a few blocks from the theater was the spot where he’d been found at age seven, caught stealing food from a convenience store and wandering the streets alone. He could still remember the fear he’d felt when the store’s owner had grabbed him by the arm as he’d tried to slip out of the store, then the look of pity when he’d seen how thin Jasper had been, his pockets stuffed full of Snickers bars.
Instead of getting hauled off to jail like Jasper’s mom had been the year before, he’d ended up with child protective services. His parents had gone on a bender, shooting up heroin somewhere for days, and had forgotten they had a kid at home to feed. He’d never lived with them again after that. And they hadn’t tried to get him back. Kids were real inconvenient for keeping up a drug habit apparently.
But the neighborhood had changed a lot from what he remembered—new shops and restaurants mixed in with some of the older places, clean streets, and just a more positive vibe overall. He’d found himself sitting on a bench in front of the boarded-up theater, imagining the box office with a poster of the Hail Yes group hanging in it. A line at the door. Jasper’s name listed as owner. Something that was truly his.
The ache that had settled inside him was a dangerous one.
He was really good at fantasizing. Those early years with his birth parents and the rough ones in foster care had given him a penchant for weaving better versions of reality in his head, pretending things were different orcould bedifferent. Dreaming. Always dreaming. What he’d gone through should’ve made him cynical. Growing up without food to eat should’ve made him want a steady job with lots of stability. But his mind had taken a hard left onto a different route, one that had more potholes and cliffs. He idealized.Of coursehe and his girlfriend could succeed in Hollywood even though hardly anyone did.Of coursehe could be on TV one day.Of coursetheir love was real and forever.Of coursereality wasn’t an actual thing that would get in the way.
He’d been smacked in the face with that blind spot in LA when he’d blown his audition and gotten dumped. He’d sworn when he returned home that he wouldn’t let it happen again. He wasn’t ready to ditch his aspirations, but he wasn’t going to be some head-in-the-clouds idiot about it anymore. Eyes wide open. Be methodical. Grind.
Thinking he could woo investors and own a theater was not grinding. It was a fairy tale.
He needed to let that shit go and focus on what he was here to do, what he was capable of doing. In-the-trenches improv, playing the dives, teaching classes for extra money, building a following from the ground up.
But maybe some of Fitz’s advice could help. His group could be doing more to build buzz and get seen so they could land better gigs. So after leaving the theater, he’d bought a video camera and tripod with what little money he had saved in his account so that he could start filming their performances like Fitz had suggested. Tomorrow, he was going to start a social media campaign and try to get influencers in to see their shows.
Influencers.
Fuck.
He usually made fun of that word. Now he was actually using it in a career plan. He was so far out of his depth that he should’ve bought a snorkel instead of a video camera.
He tried to shake the dread that had overtaken him and hurried to the bar’s storeroom, which his improv group facetiously referred to asbackstage, and pushed open the door.The other members of Hail Yes were already there, six people crammed into a space that could barely tolerate four. Everyone looked Jasper’s way when he walked in.
He lifted his palm in defense when Leah sent him a dark-eyed glare and Monique flipped him the middle finger as a greeting. “I know, I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“And now he rolls in,” Danica said as she rubbed some kind of hair product into her blond pixie cut. “Always just late enough to make us worried but not late enough to justify killing him.”
“Speak for yourself,” Church said, wiping his bald brown head with a towel. “I’m capable of murder. You made me sweat.”
Jasper rolled his eyes. The sight of his friends never failed to fill him with this odd sort of familial affection. He’d missed the hell out of them in LA but hadn’t expected them to welcome him back when he came home. He’d been the reason they’d lost their gig at the Lagniappe Comedy Theater. They should hate him. Instead, they’d forgiven him and let him back in. Of course, that didn’t mean they didn’t continuously give him shit aboutthe great abandonment.
“Church, don’t blame me for your overactive glands,” Jasper teased as he tossed his backpack on top of a keg in the corner and set down the bag with the camera equipment. The stitch in his side throbbed, and he pressed his hand over it, trying to catch his breath. “A cool breeze makes you sweat.”
“Don’t be jealous of my shiny glow,” Church said with a smirk, looping the cloth around his neck and eyeing Jasper. “Speaking of sweating. You okay, man? You look whiter than normal. And that’s saying something.”
“Yeah,” Barry said, looking up from scrolling through his phone. “You look like shit.”
Jasper wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, finding his skin clammy.“I’m fine. Three cups of coffee followed by a six-block jog probably wasn’t the best idea.”
Jasper shut the door behind him, trapping the group in the sour-smelling storeroom. Everyone was wearing their standard “college frat party” clothes tonight. Jeans with T-shirts or untucked button-downs. They tried to vary their outfits across performances but match each other in tone. Tonight was casual night. Other times, they’d dress up in black suitsBlues Brothers(and sisters) style. Other times they did boring office wear, khakis and polos. He’d found that changing the outfits could influence what scenes they ended up doing.
“And sorry I’m late.” Jasper unbuttoned his dress shirt. “I stopped on the way to buy a video camera. I thought we should start recording some of our performances.”
“Recording?” Antonio asked as he applied another layer of deodorant beneath his shirt, the snake tattoo along his side dancing with the effort. “Why?”
“Yeah,” Monique said, pulling out her signature red lipstick, which had given her the nickname Monique the Mouth. “What about the ephemeral nature of improv? Only those who are here get to see it and that show never exists again?”
She’d spoken it in a spooky tone that made Jasper snort. He tugged off his shirt. “I know I’ve said that in the past, but I thought it could be a good way to build some buzz, get more people into shows. We aren’t leveraging social media. More exposure could give us a shot to level up and out of here.”
“The Shifty Lizard not fancy enough for ya, Hollywood?” Danica asked, tone wry.
Jasper pulled a fresh T-shirt from his bag and yanked it over his head.Ahh, something that didn’t smell like coffee. “Well, I know changing clothes next to a case of Jägermeister is pretty damn glamorous but maybe something a little bigger.”
