Spur of the Moment (32 page)

“I promise. The next guy who smooches you who's not me will get the stuffing kicked out of him.”

“Excellent.”

50

Fake It Till You Make It

A
na was at the office, not working. She had been thinking a lot about what Marin had said. How would Ana advise a friend who wanted to be an actor/comedian? She'd say get off your duff and perform—get out there!

Unless, of course, the friend was as talentless as she was, and then she'd say, quit now to avoid humiliating yourself any further.

But it was true that she had made the Iron Pyrits without any experience. She had been chosen out of thirteen people to make Spur, where she was paid to do what she loved, pitiful sum though it might be. She was the youngest manager in her department, possibly in the company.

Ana searched online for acting classes and information about auditions. She pulled up the Comedy Works website to read about the amateur night. She wrote down the phone number on a sticky note.

Finally, feeling aggrieved, she got back to work.

All day her eyes drifted to the sticky note with that phone number. It said on the website that first-time amateur night participants got two minutes on stage. Two minutes. It was nothing. She could do that.

But what would she say? She strained her brain. She couldn't think of a thing. But just as soon as she wrote a two-minute set, she'd sign up to perform.

Or maybe she should sign up. If she was locked in to performing, she'd have no choice but to crank out a routine.

She grabbed the phone and dialed Comedy Works before she could change her mind. They put her on the list for the Tuesday after Tuesday.

Promptly after committing to the line-up, Ana regretted what she'd done. She wanted to make her dreams come true, but that didn't mean she wanted to start
right now.

She felt sick to her stomach. Oh God, getting up on that stage and having to tell jokes. She would never be able to do it.

 

 

F
or the next ten days, Ana wrote and practiced and timed herself and cut and edited and rewrote and memorized and practiced—in front of the mirror, in the car, and in front of members of the household, together, separately, and in every variation of pairs of her friends mathematically possible.

The night before she went on, she performed for Marin for the eight millionth time. “You didn't laugh!” Ana accused. “I knew it. I'm excruciatingly bad.”

“Ana, I've seen this routine thousands of times in the past few days. Remember how I laughed my ass off the first time? Even the best jokes stop evoking laugh-out-loud laughter after a while. I'm still amused though. Thoroughly amused.”

For her performance, Ana called in the reinforcements—all her friends from work, the club, college, and high school. Her mom and her mom's coworkers were all there. So were Jason and Ramiro's families.

She had told them all they had to laugh out loud. Smiles and smirks were no good to her. She wanted loud, fall-off-your-chair guffaws of uproarious delight. Nothing less would do.

On the one hand, she had her own personal cheering section for support. On the other hand, if she bombed, everyone she'd ever met in her life would be there to see her moment of shame.

Ana was to go on sixth, close to the end, after people had had enough beer to make it easier for them to laugh. Ana took that as a good omen. Still, she was so stressed out she thought she might be sick. Then, when it was her turn, Ana got on stage and took several deeps breaths. She pretended she was playing a character—one who was a stand-up comedian, and it worked. In character, she was able to control her nerves and pretend she had confidence. She did a bit on the challenges of living in the dorms, like trying to covertly have sex while your roommate slept (at least you
hoped
they were sleeping). Ana lay on her back across a chair, leaning her head and back so far she was horizontal, pretending she was in bed. She kept her leg closest to the audience extended, so it looked like she was lying down. She used her other foot to balance herself and to jostle back and forth toward the pretend bed frame as if she were having sex. The whole time, she was darting her eyes are to see if her “roommate” was privy to what was going on. The audience laughed at her expression and physical comedy. The laughter helped Ana feel more relaxed, more assured. She moved on to her bit about mating rituals in Cancun over spring break. Which is to say that drunk boys leaped upon you on outdoor dance floors, shoved their tongues down your throat, and if you were drunk enough not to protest, you'd found your partner for the night. A few more jokes, bam bam bam, and that was it. It was over. Applause. Laughter. Cheers.

She was so high, she couldn't quite tell, but it appeared she was getting laughs from people she didn't know and hadn't coached nor bribed.

At the end of the night, after the amateurs had finished and a local pro had performed the headlining bit, all of the performers lined up to say goodbye to the audience.

Ana got plenty of comments of the “you were great” variety, but what wowed her was when the owner of the club, said, “So you'll be here next week?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“The second time is four minutes.”

“Great.” What was she saying? Two decent minutes had been a fluke. She could never come up with four minutes of material. “Next week. I'll be here. For sure.”

Ana suspected she had many years of faking it in front of her. But she could fake it, right? She was an actress, after all.

51

Living Arrangements

C
helsey picked up Rob on her way to the theater. He'd already given her a set of keys to his apartment, but tonight she just buzzed upstairs to let him know she was here—if she went upstairs, they were likely to be very, very late for warm-ups.

“Hello, gorgeous,” she said when he emerged from the elevator door.

He gave her a long, deep kiss.
Quite the cruel tease.

“Let me grab my mail.”

He unlocked his mailbox, pulled the mail out, and followed her out to her car.

“So today was my final session with Libby,” Chelsey said, “and she got on the scale and she'd lost eighteen pounds, and she cried and I cried and it was so cool. I was so proud of her and she kept thanking me and telling me how she couldn't have done it without me. It was so gratifying. It was
awesome.”
It had been one of the best days she'd had in a long time. It was so gratifying to think that she'd helped someone achieve her goals, get healthier, and feel better about herself. There were days, sure, when Chelsey's job sucked, but today, she loved her work and couldn't wait to go in the next day. Chelsey waited for Rob to respond. He didn't. “So isn't that neat?” she prodded.

“Yeah,” he said, staring at a letter, his face crumpled with annoyance.

“What's wrong?”

“My rent. My lease is up at the end of the month and they raised my rent to $800.”

“You're kidding. That's terrible.”

“It is terrible. I'm never going to be able to afford to take you out to dinner again. And a movie? Forget it.”

They sat in silence at the stoplight. When the light turned green and Chelsey accelerated, she said, “You should move in with me.”

He looked at her incredulously.

“No, I mean it. My mortgage is $1,300 a month. If you could pay half that, you'd be helping me out a ton and you'd still be saving money on your monthly payments. Anyway, we spend just every free second together anyway.”

“That's a big step.”

“Well, you can think about it.” Chelsey thought about it, too. She'd made the suggestion without thinking; it just seemed to make economic sense. But as she imagined making dinner together every night (every night he wasn't at work, that is), waking up together every morning, falling asleep together every night, and never having to worry about rushing home before work the next day to get a change of clothes—it would be heaven! She imagined this tranquil world of quiet domesticity. She would always have her brand of shampoo handy. They would cook dinner together and grocery shop together and the most mundane activities would be transformed into blissfully romantic moments.

But she'd done it again, hadn't she? Rushing things. Guys always shied away from women who wanted to rush the whole commitment thing. What could she do? Retract her offer? Say she had just been kidding? Maybe this whole improv thing had backfired. When you were trained to say the first thing that comes to mind, you forgot how to not to blurt out whatever thoughts popped into your head.

52

The Bad News. Squared.

I
t was a Friday afternoon and Ana was bored to tears. She had plenty of work to do, but she simply couldn't bring herself to do it. Instead, she booked an appointment for headshots with a photographer for the end of March. That gave her four weeks to take off some more weight. She'd taken off a few more pounds, but her goal was to drop a dress size.

She also went online and signed up for an eight-week acting class. She was terrified, but also excited by the prospect of studying dramatic roles and interpreting the work of other writers. She couldn't wait to improve her acting abilities—she'd master every accent known to humankind, of that she was certain.

Small successes really did wonders. For the first time ever, Ramiro had come to her with a one-act play he'd written and asked her for her opinion. He'd never voluntarily let other people see his work! She loved that he would let people in on his writing at long last. Ana's small victories at the comedy club had boosted her spirits, too. She still over-practiced and overwrote her stand-up to ridiculous extremes, but she figured that maybe if she kept working on it, success wasn't a total pipe dream.

She looked at the clock. 4:35. Good lord, would the day never end?

She'd stayed up late the night before at the theater, and she simply couldn't do a single more thing to market Abbott Technology. It was so unfair that she couldn't just say, “It's Friday afternoon at 4:35 and I'm exhausted and I simply can't do a thing for this company until Monday morning,” and then go home and begin the weekend she so dearly deserved. No, she had to make it look like she was working or at least keep her body in the office until the clock struck 5:00. Well, maybe 4:55 if nobody was looking. It was Friday, after all.

She pulled up the
Rocky Mountain News'
entertainment guide online, which she'd followed religiously since
Roommates
had aired.
Roommates
had held steady with a 2.1 rating share, which wasn't bad at all for a new show on the WB. The fifth episode had aired on Tuesday, and today officially closed out the February sweeps. The entertainment writer gave a breakdown of each network's hits and misses; which shows were going on hiatus and which shows were getting the ax. Ana skipped right to the section on the WB.

WB: The WB has much to celebrate. Their series
Everwood, Family Affair,
and
What I Like About You
have successfully found audiences. Less fortunate were
Raindance
and
Going for Broke,
which have been put on hiatus. WB is saying permanent goodbyes to the well-conceived but poorly executed
Roommates
and . . .

Ana kept rereading the words, trying to understand what they meant. They couldn't possibly mean what she thought they meant.

When the first feelings of shock were replaced by a sense of loss, she remembered that it wasn't her loss she was mourning, but her friend's. The friend that she'd been jealous of and horrible to. “Oh God, poor Marin.”

Ana shut down her computer, not caring that it was not yet five, grabbed her purse, and went home.

She didn't drive quickly like she normally did. She was having too much trouble digesting the news of what she'd read to be an aggressive driver. On the one hand, Marin wouldn't have to move to L.A. On the other hand, Marin really loved doing this, and Ana wanted her to be happy. And, she'd run out of hands, but if she brought in the feet, there was, on the one foot, the fact that it would have been pretty damn cool to have a famous best friend, and having a famous best friend could certainly help Ana make contacts in the biz. But on the other foot, maybe somebody would see Marin on the show and she'd get something even better. It just sucked that it took the combination of good writing, good acting, good directing, and
luck
for a show to succeed, or in the case of shows like
Suddenly Susan,
which was given a remarkable three seasons to catch on (which it never did) crappy writing, crappy acting, crappy directing, and a lot of luck.
Roommates
had only gotten five stinkin' episodes. It wasn't fair!

Ana got home and went upstairs. As she approached Marin's room, she heard what sounded like sobbing. Ana paused in front of Marin's bedroom door. Marin was definitely crying. She must have heard about the show.

Ana knocked. There was no answer. The crying quieted. Ana knocked again. Still no answer. She pushed the door open. Marin was using the back of her hand to wipe the tears off her face.

“Marin, I'm so sorry.”

“What are you sorry about? You don't even know why I'm crying.”

“I heard.”

“You heard? How?”

“I read it online in the paper.”

“Oh my God! It's in the paper?” Marin buried her hands and started crying again. “This is so humiliating.”

Ana was confused. Did Marin actually think which shows were on television and which ones got axed was top secret?

“I can't believe he did this to me,” Marin said. Crying into a handful of tissue. Used tissues encircled her on her bed like a field of pink carnations.

Ana wasn't quite sure who the “he” Marin was talking about was. The producer? The director? Some big wig at the WB? She just hugged Marin.

“I don't understand how the papers could have found out before I did. He must have been out to some show or event with her.”

“Who is ‘he'?”

“Jay! Jay of course! Jay's cheating on me.”

“Jay's cheating on you? How did you know?”

“I found a hair scrunchy on his bedroom floor. You know I wouldn't be caught dead in one of those outside the house.”

Ana did know. She loved her hair scrunchies, but was careful to wear them only around the house or when she worked out, lest she become a target for the untiring ridicule of Ramiro and Marin.

“What did the papers say about him?” Marin asked.

“The papers didn't say anything. I was talking about . . .” This didn't really seem like the right time to tell her the show had been canceled. “Something else.”

“What?”

“Nothing. So what happened? When did you find it? What did you do?”

“I spent the night with him. Then this morning we had sex again. God, that's the really humiliating thing. I was searching around, trying to find my underwear, and I found the scrunchy. Right away my heart just sank. I asked him about it, and he kind of stuttered, stumbling over his words. He
never
does that. He's always sure of himself. He mumbled something about it must have been from one of the maids. But the way he tripped over his words I knew he was lying. I said something about why would a maid take her hair out of its band unless she was doing something like rolling around in a bed. I don't know, we kind of argued for a few more minutes, and then he stopped trying to pretend like he hadn't slept with anyone and he turned around and said that he hadn't done anything wrong, he'd never promised to be faithful, and life was too short, to sleep with just one woman and his wife didn't mind him . . .”

“His wife!”

“. . . sleeping with other women so why should I?” Marin blew her nose and tossed the used tissue with the rest. She grabbed another tissue from the box. “I feel like a prostitute. Just another geisha girl. I didn't matter at all to him and never did. I feel like such an idiot. You know what the worst thing is? The worst thing is that I didn't even break up with him, he broke up with me. He said I was too needy and too high-maintenance, and he was glad I found out. I wish I'd told him off, but I was too shocked. It didn't seem real; it was a nightmare.”

“Marin, you are not an idiot. He's a total asshole for not telling you he didn't believe in monogamy.”

“I really thought I loved him. What's wrong with me that I can't love the good guys?”

“Nothing is wrong with you. Women fall for guys who cheat on them all the time. It's a learning experience.”

“Learning experience. Ha!” she cried out bitterly. “I've had enough of those, thanks.”

Ana didn't know what to say or how to help. She felt completely useless. She just held Marin until she stopped crying.

Maybe twenty minutes had passed in a silence broken only by the sound of Marin crying or blowing her nose. Finally, Marin said in a sniffly voice, “What were you talking about?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you first came in here, you said you'd heard and you were so sorry. What were you talking about?”

“Oh nothing. Don't worry about it right now.”

“Ana, tell me. I mean it.”

“I just can't believe you haven't gotten a call. I don't want to be the one to tell you.”

“I was at the cheating asshole's all night and all yesterday. Then I came home and sequestered myself in my room to cry my eyes out. I haven't spoken to anybody but you and the Big Liar for more than twenty-four hours. Tell me what gives already.”

“The show.”

“It was canceled.”

Marin's reaction surprised Ana completely. She laughed. “Of course it was. Of course. Figures. They gave it a whopping five episodes to find an audience. Shit. That really sucks.”

Ana looked at the clock. They were supposed to be at warm-ups in fifteen minutes. “Marin, I need to get to the theater. I'll bring you a big old bottle of 100-proof alcohol and get Ramiro to fill in for you tonight.”

“No, I want to go on.”

“You can't be serious. This has to qualify as the worst day of your life hands down.”

“Yes, I think it's safe to say that it is. That's why I want to perform. I don't want to be me for a while. I'd like to be anybody else in the world, as a matter of fact.”

“Are you sure?”

Marin nodded. “Let me just go wash my face and I'll be ready to go.”

At the theater before the show, Ana asked Marin to go refill the water pitcher. While Marin was in the other room, Ana broke the news about both
Roommates
and Jay.

“Unbelievable. What is she doing here?” Chelsey said.

“I can fill in for her,” Ramiro said.

“I told her you'd do that, but she wants to go on. She wants to pretend to be somebody else for a while.”

As it turned out, Marin was the consummate professional. The five performers put on an exceptionally good show. No one in the audience could have possibly guessed what she'd gone through that day.

After the show they, as always, gathered in the bar.

Ramiro called for a round of shots for everyone.

“Why?” Marin asked suspiciously.

“We heard about the show, and it's bullshit, and I want to drink to the impossibly tough world of being an actor and performer.”

His honesty seemed to placate her. “Yeah, I can certainly drink to that.”

She called for the next round of shots.

“What are we drinking this round to?” Jason asked.

“To getting over bad jerky men and being open to finding good ones.”

They could all drink to that.

After the third round of shots, this one dedicated to getting wasted with your buddies, Ana said, a little tipsily, “Guys?” She let that hang in the air, as if that was the important thing she had to say. “It's been quite a year. Ramiro has secured a literary agent, Marin has a talent agent, we've found and lost love, and you know what, here we are again, getting drunk after performing at Spur of the Moment Theater in Denver. This is okay, this isn't bad. But I think we owe it to ourselves to see if we can make it in the big city.”

“L.A.?” Marin said.

“Chicago?” Ramiro offered.

“New York,” Ana said definitively. “We can give it, say, two years. Maybe we'll just lose our shirts and rack up credit card debt and bomb one audition after another, but I think we should really give it a shot. I'm sure we'll have some fun stories to tell the grandkids even if the whole becoming wildly rich and famous thing doesn't work out.” Ana affected the voice of an old woman: “Well, sonny, I lived in New York for two years and let me tell you . . .”

“I'm up for it,” Scott said.

“You are?” Ana said.

“What do I have to lose? A job at Abbott Technology? Bring out the violins. I'm sure there are a bunch of weaselly bosses I can work for in New York.”

“I'm game,” Marin said.

“Me, too,” Jason said.

“You guys aren't shitting me, are you?” Ana said.

“I say let's go for it,” Marin said.

“What'll happen to Spur?” Chelsey said quietly.

“We'll have to recruit several new people, obviously,” Ana, ever the project manager, said immediately. “We'll bring a few people up to the mainstage as soon as possible. I don't know, they should be ready to go in maybe six months if we practice with them really hard. I mean I don't want Spur to fall to pieces, but we also have to do what's best for our careers.”

“I don't know, you guys. I'm a home owner, and Rob is going to move in with me.”

“You can get someone to rent your house for a couple years. You and Rob can share a room in a house we all rent together,” Ana said.

“I don't know if Rob will want to move to New York. That's so far away from his family.”

“You're not sure
Rob
will want to move to New York or you're not sure
you
want to move to New York?” Ana asked.