Out of Whack (35 page)

       Laura, who was seated in the corner of our dorm room on a beanbag we’d swiped from the lounge, did not look nearly as excited. “What about school?” she asked.

       “Well...we’d leave,” I admitted. My parents weren’t exactly going to approve, considering that they were still recovering from their near dual-coronaries upon receiving my report card. My grades last semester hadn’t exactly set the world on fire—it’s more accurate to say that they extinguished it.

       “Seth, you know how much Out of Whack means to me, but I can’t just drop out of school and fly down to California. Can’t we at least reschedule this for summer break?”

       “I don’t...I mean, maybe, but...I don’t know.” I rattled my head to clear my thoughts. “No, we can’t. That’s four months away, and the job probably won’t still be there.”

       “You’re on academic probation as it is. If you take off like this they won’t let you back in. Suppose this job only lasts the three weeks? What then?”

       “Then we’d come back. All we’d have to do is make arrangements with our professors before we left.”

       “What, make arrangements for a three-week absence? That’s a fifth of the semester! Even if I was able to make up the work, most of my classes have attendance requirements, pop quizzes, lectures that cover material not in the book. I can’t miss them.”

       “What do you mean you can’t miss them? We have work in L.A.! We probably get to be on television! You’re going to pass this up for some stupid classes?”

       Travis cracked his knuckles uncomfortably. “This is a professional spat and not a lover’s spat, so I can’t just excuse myself, can I?”

       I turned to him. “Travis, do you think we should go?”

       “Yes.”

       “Good. Two to one, Laura’s outvoted.”

       “This isn’t a voting situation,” said Laura. “Neither of you seem to think that college is a big deal, but it is to me. I worked hard to get here. I have two and a half years invested in this place. And I have scholarships that I have to pay back if I get incompletes in my classes, which would also screw up my chances of getting money for future semesters!”

       I walked over and plopped down on my bed. “Laura, this could be our big chance.”

       “Could be. Those are the operative words. You’re basically asking me to throw away my college degree for this, and ‘this’ amounts to a short-term contract at a mid-level comedy club and maybe getting on a small morning talk show. It’s not anywhere near enough.”

       I resisted the urge to rip my pillow to shreds and devour them in frustration. “You know, it would have been nice to tell us a few months ago that you weren’t in this for the long haul.”

       “Oh, I’m not in it for the long haul just because I won’t drop everything, trash my education, and take off to California? What happens if we fly down there, only get three weeks of work out of it, and then nothing else comes up? I get myself some job packing groceries?”

       “What makes you think nothing will happen? We’re good. All we need is some decent exposure!”

       Laura got up, walked over, and sat down on the bed next to me. She placed her hand on my leg. “Seth, sweetheart, lots of people are good. There are people out there who have just as much talent, who work harder, and have been trying for years to make it big without success. If you think we’re going to do a couple of shows and suddenly become huge stars, you’re being incredibly naive.”

       “I don’t think we’re going to suddenly become huge stars,” I said. “But it’s definitely a step up from what we’re doing now, and we have to keep taking those steps. We’ll never make it hanging around Ohio playing the kinds of clubs we have been. We need to take this opportunity and turn it into something much bigger. It’s a risk, yeah, but it’s a risk we need to take.”

       “I can’t.”

       “Then we’re screwed,” I said. “We may as well have never started this whole thing to begin with, if we’re not going to take it any further than what we already have.”

       “I completely agree that we should take it further. Seth, I want Out of Whack to be a huge success. I just don’t think that what Los Angeles has to offer us right now is worth what we’d be giving up. We certainly won’t be able to support ourselves on what The Comedy Convention is willing to pay, so we’d be stuck working crappy day jobs while we waited for our big break.”

       “So we work crappy day jobs. What’s wrong with that?”

       “We may never get that big break!”

       I took a deep breath. “You’re the one who got Out of Whack jump-started again. If you had no intention of following through, you should have left it alone.”

       “If I had no intention of following through, I wouldn’t have put so much work into the troupe! I wouldn’t have given up almost all of my spare time, busted my ass for it! This wasn’t some diversion for me, this was something important! But I’m not going to risk wasting everything else I’ve worked for just to take it one step further. Not yet.”

       Travis cleared his throat. “I’m sensing some negative energy here. We don’t have to give an answer right away, so why doesn’t everyone just sleep on it and we’ll discuss it in the morning. Okay?”

       “I have classes all morning,” said Laura.

       “Then we’ll discuss it at lunch,” I said. “Your professors do allow you an opportunity for lunch, right?”

       “Don’t be sarcastic.”

       “Okay, seriously, we need to call a time out,” Travis said. “I’ll walk Laura back to her dorm and we can all meet tomorrow when we’ve had time to find our happy places.”

       “I can walk her back,” I said.

       “I’m sure you can, Seth, but you’re not going to. I already annoy her as much as any human being possibly can, so we don’t have to worry about damaging our relationship any further.”

       While they were gone I alternated between dark, unhealthy thoughts and fantasies about winning the very first Academy Award given to somebody whose performance in a comedy skit was so good that the fact that they’d never actually been in a movie was deemed irrelevant. I turned on my computer and tried to write, but the words refused to come.

       Twenty minutes later, Travis returned to the room. I continued staring at my computer screen.

       “What’re you writing?” he asked.

       “A skit.”

       “Oh.”

       I continued to not type.

       “Is it a good one?”

       “Not yet.”

       “Oh.”

       I finally managed to press a few keys.

       “What’d you type?”

       “The word ‘there.’”

       “Is it funny in context?”

       “Not really.”

       “Oh.”

       I shut off the monitor. “So what did you two talk about?”

       “Nothing. She didn’t say a word the whole way there. She’s definitely upset.”

       “Yeah, well, I’m upset, too.”

       “I can definitely see her point,” said Travis. “It’s a huge step. You and me, we’re slackers, we’ve had it pretty easy. Our parents will scream at us for dropping out of college, yeah, but we won’t be stuck in the same financial situation that Laura will. She has more to lose.”

       “No, we all have the same amount to lose,” I said. “We’d all be taking the same risk.”

       Travis shook his head. “That’s not true, and you’d realize it immediately if you were in a better frame of mind. We’re here in college because it’s something to do. You graduate high school, you go to college, you get a job. But Laura—”

       “I know, I know,” I said. “She’s here because it’s important to her. It always has been. Really, I understand everything she said. It’s just so frustrating. This could be our big chance!”

       “Yeah.”

       “I guess I just always assumed that if something like this happened, we’d all leap at the opportunity. If I’d put any serious thought into it, I’d have realized that I was wrong.”

       “So what do you think we should do?”

       “What can we do? We can’t force her at gunpoint!” At least I didn’t
think
we...no, no, we definitely couldn’t do that.

       “So the plan is to keep working clubs around the area. Wait a year and a half for Laura to graduate, then tour during weekends and her time off. Or else wait for an opportunity too big for her to resist.”

       “Something like that.”

       “You know,” said Travis, “Out of Whack wasn’t always a three-person operation.”

       My stomach started to clench up. “And...?”

       “And, I need you to answer a question for me, and be completely honest. Do you think you could handle a much larger acting role?”

       “Yeah...yeah, I do.”

       “So what would happen if we went to Los Angeles without her?”

       Now I was getting actual stomach pains. “We can’t do that. We’re a team.”

       “Yes, we are. But we’re a team with one member who isn’t willing to go all the way. Like I said, I understand her reasoning perfectly, but if Out of Whack is just going to be a backup plan for her, we’ll never make it. I don’t want this to be a hobby. I want it to be what we do.”

       “I don’t want to leave her behind,” I said in a small voice.

       “I don’t either. And I don’t want to burn any bridges. There would always be a place for her, any time she wants to come. If she wants to fly down for a weekend, we’d put her in the show, no problem. But, Seth, I honestly don’t think we’ll ever make it if she’s not willing to make this troupe the number one thing in her life. And I don’t want to pass up this chance.”

       “There’ll be other chances.”

       “And will she turn her back on those, too?”

       I sighed. “I don’t know.”

       “I want to do this, but I’m going to leave the final decision up to you. It’s your choice.”

       “Why mine?”

       “Because you’re the one who’s in love with her.”

       I was now facing the same choice I’d been so angry with her for throwing at me before: Laura or Out of Whack? But it was much harder now, because both of them had become more important to me than I’d believed possible.

       I loved Laura, and the real question was, would there even
be
an Out of Whack without her?

       But then again, would I resent her for holding us back? I already did, a little. Was she going to cost us our chance at success?

       And, as much as I loved her, she was my first girlfriend. Was this really it, or did I just not have anything to compare it to? Would I be wasting this opportunity for something that might have been a college fling?

       No. Laura was no fling.

       What was I supposed to do? Where the hell was my Multi-Purpose, Model 83-Q Correct Decision Making Helmet?

       “You don’t have to decide now,” said Travis.

       “No, that’s okay,” I said. “I’ve decided. We should go to Los Angeles without her.”

“Goodbyes”

       Laura and I sat in the student union, sharing what could technically be referred to as pizza-flavored grease. Well, it wasn’t quite like sharing, as Laura was the only one doing any actual eating since my stomach still hadn’t stopped hurting. We’d barely spoken, and in fact I was finding it difficult to even look her in the eye.

       “When is Travis supposed to meet us?” she asked.

       “He isn’t,” I said. “I wanted to do this by myself.”

       Laura set down her slice of grease. “Do what?”

       “Tell you that we’re going.”

       She gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I see.”

       “We’re not breaking up the troupe, just separating it temporarily. Travis and I are going on ahead, and you’ll join us later...if you want to.”

       Laura bit her lip, and her eyes shone with tears. “Okay.”

       “This is too important to pass up,” I insisted. “I’d give anything for you to come with us, but I know that you can’t.”

       “No, I can’t,” she said in a voice so soft I could barely hear her. “And I wish you both the best.”

       Suddenly I felt like my stomach was going to rip itself in half. “The decision isn’t absolutely final, we can still—”

       “No, Seth, don’t do this. You’ve made a choice. I respect it. I wish I could be like you two, ready to pack up on a second’s notice, but I can’t. When are you leaving?”

       I shrugged. “End of the week sometime.”

       “I want you to do the best you possibly can.” Tears were flowing freely now, but she didn’t try to wipe them away. “I want you to work hard, and I want you to promise me that you’ll never give up. Because this is the most important thing in your life, and it should be.”

       “This isn’t good-bye,” I said. “We’ll still see each other.”