The Heart of the Angel
(now
Empire
) was about as generic a cop show as you could possibly want. There was a cop with a dark past, fighting crime in the big city. The scene they had was about a teenager who’d been sexually attacked on a date and was refusing to press charges against her former boyfriend. The Donna character, formerly called “Mike Charlane” (renamed Alice by Mrs. Amberson) was screaming at this poor girl like a maniac, trying to get her to step up and “get some justice,” “fight for justice,” “speak for justice,” and (Scarlett’s personal favorite) “be the covergirl of justice.”
Though Mrs. Amberson hadn’t asked her to, Scarlett took the liberty of improving the scene a little, going beyond the basic guy-to-girl, LA-to-New York changes that Mrs. Amberson had penciled in. Scarlett rewrote the bad speeches, tweaked the dialogue, added a bit to the end of the scene. She was surprised to see the sun coming up outside the Jazz Suite window by the time she finished. As she walked back to her room, she startled Spencer, who was on his way to take a shower.
“Why are you up?” he asked. “Are you sick?”
“I was working,” Scarlett mumbled.
“Yeah…what is this thing today? I was in Amy’s room
all night
talking about it. I didn’t get all the details, because we got off topic. You know how it goes. Massages. Long games of I Never. Doing each other’s nails.”
She was too tired to respond to his joke. He shook her curls as she stumbled past him.
Scarlett was awakened a few hours later by Mrs. Amberson herself, who had admitted herself to the Orchid Suite.
“Rise and shine, O’Hara,” she said, giving Scarlett a good shake. “You picked the wrong morning to sleep in. It’s almost ten.”
Scarlett groaned and mumbled her way through an explanation, shoving the computer in Mrs. Amberson’s direction so that she could read the new material.
“This is
excellent
, O’Hara,” she gushed. “You’ve added so much! I knew you were a talent. Now…”
She pushed a fold of bills and a piece of paper into Scarlett’s hand.
“…get dressed. Go and print up a few copies of this. Then take a cab and meet me at this address. Bring the computer with you. I need this all to happen fast. Within the hour. I’ll explain the details when you get there.”
An hour later, Scarlett’s cab stopped in front of a massive building off Astor Place. There was a small lobby with no guard. The walls were covered in handwritten signs saying which auditions were in which rooms. She found Mrs. Amberson by herself in a tiny studio on the sixth floor, sitting at a table covered in black-and-white headshots of actresses, all around Donna’s age. Each one had a resume on the back.
“Where did all of these come from?” Scarlett asked.
“Call a few agents, tell them you’re casting, they’ll messenger over all the headshots you need before you can even put down the phone. Now, our mission today is to keep Donna here until the other audition ends. I have a spy over there who’ll tell us when they close up shop.”
“Right,” Scarlett said, feeling queasy.
“Oh, there’s one thing, O’Hara. It’s best that Spencer and Eric don’t know the exact reason they’re doing this. It might confuse their performance. I told Spencer I’m helping a producer work out an idea for a new reality program about a fake TV show.”
“So, they don’t know this is a setup?”
“They know it’s a setup,” she clarified, “they just don’t know all of the details. Imagine trying to improvise for three hours knowing this was all arranged for this one person. Trust me…this is better. And they’ll be paid a hundred dollars each for their time.”
Before Scarlett could reply, there was a knock at the door.
“I think our cast is here,” Mrs. Amberson said. “Let me do the talking.”
The door opened to reveal Eric, dressed in a fine light blue dress shirt and black pants. He was actually, genuinely breathtaking.
“Spencer is right behind me,” he said, smiling at Scarlett. “He’s locking his bike up.”
Spencer was completely out of breath when he appeared a moment later.
“Sorry,” he said. “So much traffic. I just got off my shift.”
“You’re fine. And you smell like breakfast. How nice.”
Mrs. Amberson went over the setup one more time, possibly for her benefit. Donna had been told that
The Heart of the Empire
had
started production when the lead actress was hospitalized. It needed to be recast immediately, and the chosen actress would start work that week. Eric was playing the casting director. Spencer was the general assistant and would be reading the role of young police detective, Hank Stewart. Mrs. Amberson had acquired a video camera, which would be connected to Scarlett’s computer—the story being that everything that was filmed was being shown live to a room full of studio executives in LA. In reality, the camera didn’t have a battery and the cord didn’t even fit into any of the computer ports.
“The goal,” Mrs. Amberson told Spencer and Eric, “is to keep her going as long as possible. We really want to give people an idea of how much actors have to go through to get a part. And you, Scarlett…”
Scarlett looked up from her efforts to disguise the unconnected video cable with a pile of papers. “…step out into the hall with me for a moment while Spencer and Eric prepare.”
Scarlett followed Mrs. Amberson down the hall, where she scuttled out of the low skylight and onto a concrete ledge outside. Scarlett stayed inside, leaning on the sill while Mrs. Amberson pulled out her cigarette case and lit up.
“I have a surprise for you, O’Hara,” she said. “Guess what you’ll be doing while all of this is going on?”
“Going with you?” Scarlett asked.
“And miss the fun? Oh, no. You’re going to be reading the part of our young victim.”
Scarlett was too stunned to speak. Her refusal came in the form of wide eyes and a backward stagger.
“Half the actresses on these kinds of shows are so wooden that you could build a table out of them,” Mrs. Amberson said. “Donna won’t know the difference. Just read the lines and don’t fall over. That’s all there is to it.”
“That’s not all there is!” Scarlett said. “They’re pretending to be casting people! They’re improvising!”
“So?”
“So…I’m not an actress!”
“Who cares? All improvising means is
making things up
, which you can do. I’ve seen the way you and your brother bounce things off each other. You’re a natural. Spencer will help you.”
“He can’t
teach me how to act
in the next fifteen minutes.”
“Leave the work to them. Your part is to sit there and look clueless. Couldn’t be simpler.”
“I can’t,” Scarlett said.
Mrs. Amberson leaned back through the skylight to pluck the wayward curl from its traditional spot in Scarlett’s eye.
“Stop worrying so much, O’Hara. I wouldn’t tell you to do it if I didn’t think you had it in you. Now get down there. I have to go before Donna arrives.”
Scarlett walked back down the hall slowly, pausing by the elevator bank. All she had to do was hit the button and she could get away from this mess.
Sit there and look clueless
, she said to herself.
Maybe she could play a completely clueless person. She had typed and written part of the script, so at least she sort of knew it. If she forced herself back into that room…this was a chance to impress Eric unlike any other.
At the very least, she had to go down and let Spencer and Eric
know what was going on. She let herself back into the studio, where they were discussing how to stage the scene.
“Mrs. Amberson is leaving,” she said. “She has this stupid idea that I should play the girl, but…”
“Why not?” Eric said. “We need another person.”
Spencer looked less sure, and looked like he was about to say something to that effect when there was a buzz at the door.
“Showtime,” he said, clapping her on the back. “Guess you’re in.”
Donna Spendler didn’t look very vicious standing there on the threshold of the studio. She looked a bit older than Mrs. Amberson. Her hair was shoulder-length, perfectly coiffed. It had long gone gray, but she had had it colored so that it was a glistening silver, with many highlights and tones.
Spencer ushered her in, looking every inch the assistant.
“I was surprised to get your call,” she said. “Pleasantly so. And you caught me just at the perfect time.”
“Glad to hear it,” Eric said coolly. He stood and extended his hand. “I’m Paul, the casting director.”
That was his agreed-upon name. Spencer (who had gleefully renamed himself Dick) extended his hand. Scarlett quickly chose the name Tara.
“Did you get the sides we messengered over to your agent?” Spencer said.
Sides, Scarlett reminded herself. The script pages were called sides.
“Right here,” Donna said. “I read them in the cab on the way over, so I’m still a little green.”
“No worries. We can go through it a few times before we roll.”
“Is it just the three of you?” Donna asked.
“There are a lot more of us,” Eric said, pointing to the unconnected, dead video camera. “Video feed to LA. They’ll be about ten or fifteen people watching on the west coast.”
God, he was good. Scarlett’s only hope now was that her computer didn’t start belching smoke or just explode for good measure.
“We’re just going to read through it first,” Spencer said, throwing Scarlett a quick look to see how she was coping.
The reading was easy enough, even though Scarlett didn’t sound remotely like an actress. She was, however, a natural at the “sitting and looking clueless” part. There was a bit of a snag when they got to the part where the girl was supposed to start crying hysterically. Scarlett couldn’t make herself cry. The only person she knew who could do that was Ashley Wallace at school, and Ashley was a well-known psychopath. At that part in the script, Scarlett just slapped her hand over her eyes to represent crying.
Donna and Spencer actually did read the parts like actors. It was strange for Scarlett to hear her words spoken back to her. She fought the urge to correct them, to tell them how it sounded in her head.
“Good,” Spencer said, when they were done. He said it with as much enthusiasm as he could without seeming like her brother trying to be nice about a terrible performance.
Donna was eyeing Scarlett carefully. The one thing that must have been one million percent clear was that Scarlett was not an actress. A small, very dim child could have figured that out.
“Are you…” she began, “are you
in
the show?”
“Tara is the coproducer’s daughter,” Eric chimed in quickly. “She’s doing us a huge favor today. You have
no idea
how tight this situation is. We’ve never had to cast a lead in one day before.”
It was a breathtaking save, and one that brought instant warmth from Donna Spendler. Now that Scarlett was Tara, daughter of a producer, and not just Tara, general idiot…there was a warm, almost maternal vibe.
“You’re doing an excellent job,” she said sweetly. “I’d never have known you weren’t a pro.”
“Thanks,” Scarlett said dryly.
“Now let’s do it for real,” Eric said, pretending to switch on the camera.
So they did it again. And again. And again. Eric watched and called “LA” (Mrs. Amberson) a few times to see if more was needed. LA always needed more. Scarlett was so fried she thought she’d cry if she had to read those lines again. Spencer and Donna, being professionals, kept going strong. After the eighteenth take, though, Donna called proceedings to a halt.
“I feel like I’ve done all I can with that,” she said. “Without direction, I mean. At this point, we’re just repeating ourselves.”
That’s the point
, Scarlett wanted to say. But secretly she wanted to hug Donna for making it stop.
“Sure,” Eric said confidently. “Let me give them a call.”
He vanished into the hall with his phone. Donna went to the corner to drink from her bottle of water and do some neck rolls. Spencer gave Scarlett a sly shoulder bump of support as he went over to the table to move the headshots around, as if he was doing something useful with them.
“Okay,” Eric said, returning. “They just need to see one more thing. We’re going to need to try a little improv scene with you and…Dick. Tara, you can come and sit over here with me.”
This was new. Mrs. Amberson clearly needed time. It didn’t matter to Scarlett as long as she didn’t have to be in it anymore. Now her job was to sit next to Eric. That, she could do.
“This character has a violence problem,” Eric explained. “We want to see a scene in the station where Alice really oversteps the bounds. Can you get rough with him?”
As Donna and Spencer squared off, and Eric made up a situation, there was a convulsion in Scarlett’s abdomen, a physically painful twinge.
Oh, no. This was bad.
The hysteria finally hit Scarlett. She was going to start laughing, and she was never, ever going to stop. It wasn’t a joyful feeling, it was a horribly terrifying one.
“Don’t worry,” Spencer was saying to Donna. “You can come right at me.”
The heave of laughter was building in Scarlett’s chest. She put every ounce of energy in her body into pushing it down. She tried not to see, not to hear, not to think…even when Donna was throwing Spencer up against the wall and screaming the words, “Do you want to know what it feels like to be a victim?” into his face.
The laugh was just at the bottom of her throat, and when it came, it would be loud, and it would never, ever stop. It would be laughter vomit.
Just as it was all going to come out, Eric reached over and took her hand under the table.
“Squeeze,” he whispered surreptitiously. “Hard.”
Scarlett squeezed. She squeezed so hard that she worried that she might break his fingers. He didn’t wince. Didn’t blink. Just kept his eyes straight forward on the scene like it wasn’t even happening.
She felt herself relaxing. The laugh eased itself back down. Scarlett released some of the pressure, but kept her hand in Eric’s for safety as Donna raged on, cycling through every emotion, showing them everything she could. She fought, she cried, she swung. Spencer weaved and dodged and held her back. And all the while, Eric squeezed Scarlett’s hand gently. Something real passed through that squeeze. He wasn’t doing it for the scene anymore—he was holding her hand because he wanted to, and he extracted it reluctantly when things drew to a close.
“That was great,” he said, when Donna had finished. “I’ll just check with them…”
“LA” was apparently satisfied, and Donna was thanked and dismissed, with promises that someone would be in touch soon. When she was gone, the three of them were quiet for a moment. They heard her footsteps going off in the distance, the ding of the elevator, the close of the door.
Eric put his head down on the table. Spencer sprang up, grabbed Scarlett, and threw her over his shoulder.
“You were amazing!” he said.
“I sucked,” she replied, upside down. “I almost laughed.”
“No,” Eric said, rubbing his crushed hand with a knowing smile. “You covered yourself really well.”
“Seriously,” Spencer said, shifting her into piggyback position. “I have to admit I was worried when you got thrown into it, but you
totally pulled it off like a champ. I could tell you were scared, but you did it, anyway.”
This praise felt good…maybe better than anything in recent memory. She had made her brother proud and impressed the guy she liked. The mood only improved when Mrs. Amberson returned to see how it all went. She was effusive in her praise.
“Now,” she said, passing some money to Spencer and Eric, “my friends didn’t want to bother with a confidentiality agreement, but it’s important that you don’t tell anyone about this. Word gets out way too easily. So, lips sealed! You two can head off. Scarlett and I will finish up here.”
Eric looked like he wanted to linger a bit, but with Mrs. Amberson shooing him out and Spencer going as well, he couldn’t really stay.
“I knew you had it in you,” Mrs. Amberson said when they were gone.
“I guess,” Scarlett replied.
“You guess? Learn to take a compliment, O’Hara. I asked for your help, and you came through. I won’t forget this, mark my words.”
It was only now that Scarlett remembered what this was all about. For better or for worse, she had just helped to destroy Donna’s chance at a Broadway role. And though she knew that Mrs. Amberson’s words were meant in a friendly way, she couldn’t help but feel a faint sense of alarm, as if the sirens in the street below were headed in her direction.