Someday, Someday, Maybe (18 page)

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BEEEP.

I’ve had no auditions in the last two weeks and I’m starting to get nervous.

Joe called the Monday after the
Kevin and Kathy
shoot to congratulate me again, and say that he wanted me to come into the agency at some point and meet the other agents, because “they were all very excited” about me. But the first two weeks after
Kevin and Kathy
were so full of auditions and meetings with casting people, there wasn’t time to schedule an appointment. And in the last three weeks, no one called to set one up.

I tried my best to be prepared for every audition, but I’d never had such full days before. It was all a blur of papers coming off the roll from the fax machine and time spent rushing from one building in Manhattan to another. But then we ran out of fax paper and I kept forgetting to get a new roll, so I had to cold read a few times, and I’ll admit, there were a few days when I showed up at an audition not really prepared. And then there was the big audition I
had
prepared for, a small part in a Broadway play directed by Mike Stanley, but I was so nervous to meet him that I left out an entire page of the scene and he didn’t ask me to read it again, and when he asked me if I studied with anyone in town I went blank and couldn’t think of Stavros’s name, and I went home and cried.

“The feedback was that you seemed a little green,” Richard explained, delicately.

Those first few weeks, Joe would come to the phone when I called, but now Richard, Joe’s assistant, is the only person I get. I thought that was fine at first since he was the one who actually saw me at the Showcase, but now I worry that I’ve been demoted. It was Richard who sent me to the photographer that “Joe loves” to get new head shots, even though I’d had new ones done just a few months ago that cost over a hundred dollars. Richard said that Joe thought mine were too smiley and commercial, and I needed some that looked like I could be a dramatic actress, not just a comedienne. I thought my new one looked more angry and stiff than dramatic, but he assured me the photo would transform after it was retouched, a painstaking process using a tiny paintbrush to take out imperfections on the blown-up negative before the photos can be copied. The retouching took two weeks, and the eight-by-ten glossy copies cost three hundred dollars. Now I have no freckles, and the half-moon area under my eyes looks oddly whiter than the rest of my face, but I still look angry.

I thought it made sense that I’d had no auditions while the agency was waiting for the new pictures. But there were no auditions the week after I dropped them off, either.

I’m worried that those first three weeks were my chance to prove that getting the
Kevin and Kathy
job wasn’t some sort of fluke, but I blew it and they’ve forgotten about me now. I read an article in
Backstage
that said it’s important to remind your agent that you are available and interested in working, so I finally braced myself and called Absolute at the beginning of the third silent week. The problem was that because I didn’t really have a reason to call, I sort of choked on the phone. I asked to speak to Joe, and Richard said he was sorry, Joe was in a meeting, but could he help me with anything?

“Um, uh, no that’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, well, actually, as long as we’re talking, I was just wondering if there’s anything I can be doing, or if there’s something I’m
not
doing, or, um, are my head shots working okay?”

“Your head shots?”

“Yeah, the new ones. I was just checking. I mean, Joe picked that serious one where my hand is on my chin, right?”

“I think so, I have it here somewhere … yes, your hand is on your chin, and your head is sort of tilted to the side?”

“Yeah. Is that … I wonder if it’s sort of
cheesy
? And maybe that’s why, uh, no one is calling?”

I didn’t intend to complain or bring this up. I must sound rude, like I’m telling them how to do their job. I’m just looking for someone to give me some sort of explanation for why nothing is happening.

“But Franny, Joe loves this shot. I mean, I do, too, but Joe really loves it, which is why he picked it. He’s really a master at choosing the picture that best represents you. So, no problem there. Sooo, there’s really nothing else for you to do right now but wait. Sorry.” There’s a pause where I feel as though Richard wants to say something else, but then doesn’t.

“So … anything else, Franny?”

“Yeah, no, thanks. That’s it. Just, uh, checking in.”

“Okay, thanks Franny, I’ll let Joe know you called … to check in.”

It was worse when I heard Richard say it back.

I thought my life was going to radically change when I got an agent, but it’s exactly the same except that I’m spending more money.

I finally got the check from
Kevin and Kathy
, but I was shocked to see over half of it gone to taxes and commission to the agency.

“That’s it?” I said to Dan as he looked the check over carefully. I hoped he’d find some error, or maybe realize I’d filled out the tax form incorrectly. But he handed it back and shook his head.

“They’re taxing you like you make that kind of money every week,” he explained.

“But I don’t,” I said helplessly, and he shook his head in sympathy.

On top of that, I’m still recovering from the various shifts that Herb docked me for shooting
Kevin and Kathy
that Friday night, plus the cost of the new photos. I had to start picking up some shifts at Best Intentions, the catering place where I briefly worked when I first moved here. At first, watching weddings from the back of the grand ballroom was inspiring. I’d tear up during the toasts, even while clearing glasses. But after a while, the demanding brides wore me out, the grand ballroom felt impersonal and overused, and I became as jaded as the waiters I swore I’d never become, who start eyeing their watches exactly at eleven
P.M.
and prying half-full glasses out of the drunk attendees’ hands.

I find myself wondering whether things would be different if I’d signed with Barney Sparks. I imagine calling him up to “check in,” and I don’t think I would have felt so awkward. Plus, he has no assistant, so he actually would have had to take my call. But I can’t allow myself to picture that—I signed a yearlong contract with Absolute.

Getting an agent was undeniable progress, an actual box I could check and an accomplishment I could point to. But if you have an agent who never calls you for anything, I’m not sure it’s any better than not having an agent. In fact, I think it’s worse. Before, I wasn’t being rejected so much as I was going unnoticed. Now I have someone who noticed me at first, but now seems to have found me lacking.

I
called my dad after the sixth week of not receiving any calls from Absolute.

“I think my agent forgot about me.”

“I think my daughter forgot about me.”

“Dad.”

“Who is this?”

“Har-har. It’s your daughter, the unemployed actress.”

“She lives!”

“I think I need a manager.”

“Why do you need a manager? I thought you just got an agent.”

“I did, but they aren’t getting me any auditions.”

“If you have no auditions, what’s there to manage?”

“A manager would help me
get
auditions.”

“How could a manager do that when the agents can’t?”

“Well, managers have fewer people, so they can focus just on you.”

“Then why do you have an agent at all? Why not just have a manager?”

“You have to have an agent. They’re the only ones allowed to negotiate contracts. Agents are franchised. Managers aren’t.”

“So, anyone can say they’re a manager?”

“Well, sort of, yes.”

“Why don’t I say I’m your manager and go tell your agent he’s doing a crappy job for my favorite client?”

“Thanks, Dad.”

A
few days later, Jane and I are in the living room sitting cross-legged on either end of the couch and flipping through channels when
Still Nursing
comes on. Dan is working at the dining room table, but he always says he isn’t bothered by us sitting and talking in there while he’s writing due to his uncanny ability to completely tune us out, and in fact our chatter is so incessant, we’re like human white noise. It’s a handy thing to have in a roommate.

“I think I don’t look right,” I say, mesmerized by the actress on the screen.

“Right for what?”

“You know, in general. For show business. I think that’s why I’m not getting any calls from the agency.”

“What do you think is the
right
way to look?”

“You know, more like these girls on
Still Nursing
.” I gesture toward the television, where a buxom blonde in a short skirt and open doctor’s coat is struggling to reattach the I.V. of an elderly male patient by straddling his hospital bed, “accidentally” smothering him with her cleavage. The studio audience screams with laughter.

“
Uchh
. Gross.” Jane waves a hand dismissively. “This show. It’s the absolute end of civilization. One male nurse in a pediatric ward with all female doctors! What a premise! Look at them—none of them are believable as doctors. Half of them got new boobs between seasons one and two. I saw you last season, ladies—am I to believe you suddenly grew those mammaries over the summer? Please. They’re too skinny, anyway.”

The blond doctor on the television drops her clipboard on the floor and as she leans over to pick it up, the heart monitor of the patient starts beeping rapidly. More laughter.

“Yeah, but maybe that’s what people should be saying about me. Like when
The Enquirer
does those covers where they call someone
SCARY SKINNY!
People don’t look at it because they think the people on the cover look bad. They look at the magazine because they wish it was them. They want to be scary skinny, too. I’d be proud if people said, ‘She’s too skinny.’ ‘Have you seen that actress, Franny Banks? I’m worried about her. Someone should give her a candy bar, she looks like she might faint.’ That’s what the people want. That’s what makes people look up to you.”

“I’m going to order you some of those ‘Stop the Insanity’ tapes.”

“Casey told me about this special pot they have in L.A. that doesn’t give you the munchies. That’s apparently how those
Still Nursing
girls got so skinny.”

Jane shakes her head and speaks to me gently, like you might to a toddler who is sleepwalking. “Casey? Casey, the model who cries in every scene, told you that?”

“Yeah. The pot is really expensive, though, and you have to know somebody who knows somebody in order to get it. Somebody she went to high school with got her some. She could probably get me some, too. Maybe I should start smoking the skinny pot.”

Jane clicks the remote and
Still Nursing
fades to black. She turns to face me. “Frances. Truly. This kind of reasoning results in being found dead at three
A.M.
in a bathtub at the Chelsea Hotel. You’re an actor. You used to just worry about being an actor. And anyway, the last time we tried to smoke pot, you fell asleep by eight thirty.”