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“To see all of them if I can.”
“Well, you can go on into the gym.”
Alessandro hugged her once more and walked down the artwork-lined corridor to the gymnasium slash theater slash dance hall slash event space. He’d acted in front of his first real audience here. And he wouldn’t be worth the insurance his new production had taken out on him without it.
Four women sitting at a table in front of the black-draped stage jumped up to hug him as Charlene had. Etta, the director of the center, was a black woman as petite as Charlene but with a buzz cut. Susie, who ran the Studio, had given Alessandro some of his harshest critiques and some of his highest praise. She was in her usual uniform of jeans and a yellow tee that rocked against her green shoulder-length curls. Jaelyn was a successful actress whose career had spurred on everyone in Alessandro’s class. She now had a regular gig on a police procedural show on cable TV.
And finally there was Melanie, a trans woman who was building her career in the Boston theater world. “Don’t hug Melanie,” Susie grumbled. “She’s quitting us. Traitor.”
“What?” Alessandro said, of course ignoring his old teacher.
“I gotWicked!” Melanie cried.
“Fantastica!” Alessandro hugged her again. “That is the best news I’ve heard all year!”
“Alessandro,” Etta said. “You. Are. A. Movie. Star. Good news probably falls in your inbox twice a day.”
“That isn’t real. Melanie in New York is real. It’s the mother ship calling you home.”
He loved to see her face like this: confident, fulfilled, illuminated from the inside. Melanie had dreamed of Broadway for as long as he’d known her. He, on the other hand, kept waiting for someone to pop out and tell him the whole Hollywood thing was a joke, and every photo of him seemed to reflect that, at least in his eyes.
“Don’t congratulate her,” Susie complained. “She’s taking all her social media knowledge with her. Now how are we going to handle the publicity for the fundraiser?”
“Schedulers,” Melanie said. “I told you. I’ll set it up before I leave.”
“But we were going to do videos during the kids’ classes this week, and I need the person with the camera here to, yuh know,filmthem.”
“I know.” Melanie sat down on one of the chairs. “I’m sorry about that. But rehearsals start Monday.” She grabbed her hair with two hands, her elbows on the table. “You can do it, you know,” she told Susie. “You only need a cell phone.”
“And editing software and music and a few extrahoursto put it together. And I’m swamped with collecting everything for the auction.”
Alessandro pulled himself up a chair and sat, amused and pleased that after their brief greetings, he was getting no more attention than any other alum. Their focus was always on the next student, the next kid who needed help.
“And I’ve got a budget meeting with the board like two days after the fundraiser,” Etta reminded them, “and I need to bury myself in spreadsheets.”
“I’ll film them,” Jaelyn said. “I don’t know a ton about editing software, but if my phone camera can do it, I’ll figure it out.”
“Can you?” Melanie all but fell on her neck. “That would make me feel so much better.”
“Actually, what days are we talking?” Jaelyn said, her face twisting. “I forget I have a day job these days. Is it after school?”
“Yeah,” Susie said.
“Hmm… I might be filming.”
Susie threw up her hands. “Don’tdothat to us!”
“I’ll do it,” Alessandro said. “I don’t have anything better to do right now.”
They looked at him as though they’d forgotten he was there. Which made him smile. Being the one in the room everyone stared at had gotten too comfortable.
Showing up to classes and taking video of a hundred kids didn’t exactly count as hiding in his hotel room. But he wasn’t going to tell these ladies that. Their selflessness when it came to the Studio had always made him feel inadequate. If he could help, he’d help, and Yasmin would just have to deal with it.
Wouldn’t it be good for his image? To help? Like she’d said? Would he be considered aseriousactor again?
He shook the thoughts out of his head. This wasn’t about how he looked to the world. It was about how he looked to these women, who he respected perhaps more than anyone.
“Don’t you have a movie coming up?” Susie said, almost accusing him.
