As we walk through the door
of the apartment
,
I glance
at the counter where
Sophia
had dangled her legs the night before
.
It was a lifetime ago when I had stood in this room and yet it hadn’t even been 24 hours. I said a silent thank you that I had never been able to forget my lust for
Sophia
Pearce.
I never would have come to this stupid party or gone to that dine
r or met this incredible girl
.
“I think there’s probably something in the fridge that I can whip up,” she says as she flops onto the couch. “
We don’t need to order anything.
Just as soon as I can
get these stupid shoes
off.” She kicks
off the boot and
groans
. “I definitely should have gone for
the
flip flops. I have no idea why we members of the female species need to be tortured this way. Screw fashion.”
The shoes discarded, she walks into the kitchen. “Salmon, pasta, chicken,” she lists. “Chris! What kind of food do you eat? Please, God, tell me you’
re not a vegetarian.”
“I’m
not a vegetarian!” I yell back,
grab
bing
the bottle of wine from my bag
and
following her
into the kitchen.
She’s biting her lip again
as she sorts through the refrigerator
.
Before I spontaneously combust,
I grab a couple of wine glasses from the rack and pour two.
“What is that? White?” she asks.
“White
.
”
“Ok, hmmm…” S
he takes the glass absent-mindedly as she grabs a package and places it on the counter. “Hey! What are you doing in here? No one bothers the chef. Go take
five seconds
to
memorize your lines and then figure out something to do with yourself.
”
H
er
command
turns me on, and I’m trying desperately to hide the evidence of that
, so I duck out the door
.
Distraction. Distraction.
I sit on the couch and page through the script,
and the lines implant
themselves
on my
brain
. F
or once, I’m grateful for
my
stupid photographic memory.
I’ll be ready for the audition. I know this character. I am this character.
Thirty minutes later, she calls out
.
“
Hot plates.
Coming
out
!”
“Sorry
for kicking you out
.” S
he places a plate of food in fron
t
of me on the coffee table
. “
I ca
n’t cook if people are watching. I get really nervous,
and I didn’t want to burn
Sophia
’s apartment down
.
”
The
food looks absolutely delicious. A
s I
take my first bite of the salmon
, I let out a little satisfi
ed sigh. “Now, this is a talent.”
“No, this is one of my thirty-minute specials. Give me a couple of hours and a farmer’s market, and I’ll give you a masterpiece. I figured that we had too much work
to do on the script for that.”
I don’t even want to think about the
script
anymore
, but she’s right. The aud
ition is the day after tomorrow
and
I still haven’t run through the other scenes.
The salmon is covered in some sort of honey glaze that’s sweet and spicy at the same time and she’s added some potatoes and asparagus. I have no idea how she was able to do that in thirty minutes, but I’m not complaining.
“This is absolutely delicious. How did you ever learn to cook like that?”
“Eh, a li
ttle of this, a little of that. I
t’
s cooking, not rocket science.
My dad was the chef in my family, but he died when I was ten. It was either learn to cook or learn to live on overdone casseroles. I chose the former.
”
Her voice catches when she mentions her dad.
“I’m sorry about your dad.”
She nods. “Yeah. Me, too.” She clears her throat and gives me a smile. “At least I got one skill out of it, though.”
It’s clear that she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, and that’s certainly a sentiment I understand. I change the subject.
“Is there anything you’re not good at?” It’s a real question. I haven’t found anything
yet
.
She erupts with laughter. “Haven’
t you heard anything I said? Walking, using a hockey stick, eating without dropping food all over myself…those are just the beginning of the things
that
I have no hope
of
ever being able to do. I probably would
n’t make much of a maid
or a coat girl
, either.” S
he grins slyly at me, and I throw my napkin at her.
“I’m going to be apologizing for that forever.”
“I’m not very good with forgiveness. We can add that to the list.”
“The first step is to start picking up after yourself. Who leaves boots just lying in the middle of the floor like that? The pointy end on one of these things is a safety hazard.” The napkin comes right back at me, and
I
catch it in my hand before turning back to the food.
“I don’t even know
if
you’re c
hewing. It’s more like inhaling,” she says, staring at my nearly empty plate before pushing another hunk of salmon onto it.
“
I would argue that your eating habits are a safety hazard. I never learned the Heimlich, so you’re totally screwed.”
“I’m adding that to the list,” I manage, in between bites of food.
“No first aid skills.”
“I think we’re going
to need a bigger piece of paper for this so-called list
.”
I quiz her about other possible shortcomings aft
er all of my dinner is inhaled. S
he’s self-deprecating, listing a laundry list of faults. She manages to dodge the more personal questions with offhand remarks, a skill I admire but isn’t exactly in line w
ith my objective of figuring out everything I can about her
.
We’re almost finished eating
when
I notice that her
wine glass is still almost full.
“Not a big drinker?”
“I actually love
wine with meals.
It’s the one kind of drin
king my
mom doesn
’t completely
hate
.
Once
she
realized that I loved food
and I was going to be taking care of all of the cooking
,
she
would usua
lly let me have a little glass.” She takes a long sip. “Don’t worry.
I can get my drink on
like anybody
else
.
Just don’t tell anyone else in my family. They think alcohol is a sin.”
I snort. “No, they do not.”
She adopts a nasally tone and scrunches her face up.
“
’
Alcohol is a sign that the devil is inside you.
Praise Jesus that I’ve never touched the stuff.
’
” She pulls out of character. “That’s my Aunt Grace. My uncle soun
ds more like this. ‘
A drop of wine is
only acceptable when the
Cleveland
Browns win.
’
” She laughs and slips back into herself. “S
ince that never happens, alcohol is nev
er acceptable.”
“Alcohol is always acceptable for New Yorkers
,” I say, picking
up our plates and
carrying them into the kitchen.
“
Then my refusal to imbibe
is just another sign that I’m just following the roots of my Ohioan ancestors.” She giggles
and drops the other dishes into the sink
. “No really, though. T
onight, I have a job to do. Nate would never drink alcohol while he’s on the clock.”
I laugh
and start sticking plates in the dishwasher
. “
Nick is an alcoholic.
It comes up later in the script
.”
“I should have
known.
”
She smacks herself
on the head as I come
to sit on the couch with her,
bottle in hand. “
I follow the method approach whenever I think about an acting job, and i
n that case, I shall indulge.” She takes a big sip of her wine and lifts her glass in the air.
“All ready to work,” she says
as I top off our glasses
again
.
She points to middle of the living room and I reluctantly follow her as she gets up and braces herself in her best tough-guy stance
.
We work on the scenes for hours. We review the one with Nick and James again, and then she plays
James’
down-on-his-luck brother from New Orleans.
His name in the script is Boudreaux, which puts her into hysterics.
She tries on a Southern accent, and
I think I finally find one thing that she’s not so good at.
“You sound like…you
sound
like a bad cross between Australian surfer and British spy.” I’m laughing and point
ing
at her.
“Shut up! My accent is so good, darling.”
It’s not actually, and she knows it, collapsing in a
fit of giggles. “Fine,” she says
. “You try.”
I give her my best shot
, hunching over like I imagine Boudreaux might
. “James, all I need is a
little something to get me
by. Just something to make it to the next stop on the tour.”
She stares
. “That is most definitely, absolutely, completely unfair.”
I take a little bow
and stumble around the room, mimicking her depiction of his drunk
enness. “Boudreaux
at your service, ma’am.”
“No, you wouldn’t make a good Boudreaux,” she says
after she tilts her head to the side, studying me.
“I wouldn’t buy you as a drunk.”
“I have the right pedigree.” I didn’t mean to say it, and it came out wrong,
all
bitter and harsh. The silence is deafening. She doesn’t respond for a long minute,
and we stare at each other. H
er eyes are an invitation
for me to keep talking
and there’s no judgment there, just room for me
to spill my guts
. I haven’t talked about him to anyone since I was a kid and
Diana set me up with a shrink. It only took o
ne session and a broken chair
to ensure that there wouldn’t be any more shrinks in my future.
The
blue
of her eyes
is end
less. “My dad’s a drunk,” I say. “Certifiable.” I cross my legs beneath me, and she joins me on the floor.
It’s another long moment, and she nods her head. “I’m sorry, Chris.”
My
words come out in a long rush.
“That’s why I’m here, actually. I mean, not here, in this room, but here in New Yo
rk.”
She nods in encouragement.
I can’t believe I’m talking about this, but the whole story is coming out and there’s no stopping it.
“He always drank too much, but then his career started to fall apart and he just fell out of his own skin, you know? He stopped being himself and started being an extension of the alcohol. My sister Diana tried to keep the family together, but my mom was never around much and things fell apart after that. There were rehabs, centers, meetings, but
nothing ever seemed to work. And two years ago,
the doctors
told us he had cancer. They tried chemo for a while, but now it’s pretty much over. He came home to die.”
I look for pity in her eyes, but
she’s steady—waiting for me to share as much or as little as I need to
. “And so you came home?”
“For Dian
a. Not for him. Never for him.
I use
d to think that it was my fault when I was a kid.
The alcoholism. All of it. I tip-toed around him because I was always afraid that I was going to
make him angry
. None of it
mattered
.
He was angry anyways.”