Waiting for Callback (28 page)

He hadn’t bigged up the modelling; Alex was OK. I wondered what the brothers were like.

‘I’m Damian. I’m an only child. I’ve done a fair bit of acting at school and professionally and it’s definitely what I want to do when I grow up.’

‘When I grow up’ – seriously, who says that? The jury is still out on Damian.

‘Hi, I’m Lana and, um, I like acting too and singing and dancing and . . . er . . .’ Long pause. ‘I’m suddenly a bit nervous.’

‘Don’t be nervous, Lana, this isn’t some sort of test. We just want you all to
relax
and have
fun
today. You’ve all done
really
well getting this
far.’ Now Janey was emphasizing every word, but how stupid did we look? By definition, this was some sort of test.

It was my turn and I had a bit of a brain freeze too. There was an even longer awkward pause. ‘Hey.’ I did a strange sort of little wave. ‘Sorry, I’m Elektra and
I’m nervous too . . . obviously . . .’ My voice was a bit squeaky. I forced it low, maybe a bit too low. ‘I haven’t really done much acting, but I do enjoy it. Erm, there
are quite a lot of things I enjoy.’ I really had not intended that to sound suggestive, but Alex was definitely smirking; focus, Elektra, focus. ‘I haven’t got any brothers or
sisters.’ Not cool.

‘Thank you, Elektra,’ said Janey, nodding intensely as if I’d said something really clever and deeply insightful.

And finally, ‘I’m Carlo, I’m seventeen, I used to live in New York and I’ve done a bit of acting out there. Music’s my thing.’

Risky to say that something that wasn’t acting was his thing. Carlo was cool, maybe too cool. Time would tell.

‘
Okaaay
,’ said Janey, ‘that was GREAT.’ Every word she said now came with its very own exclamation mark she was trying so hard to make us all feel good.
‘Let’s do one more round and this time I want each of you to tell us one, just one,’ I swear she looked at Amy when she said that, ‘secret thing about yourself that nobody
would guess. It’s important as actors that you can lay yourselves open to others. Alex, you go first.’

I think Janey fancied Alex, which was fair enough.

‘I like One Direction.’

That was brave. Carlo raised an eyebrow, but the rest of us just looked at him adoringly.

‘I can speak Polish.
Powodzenia
, everyone!’

That was Lana and that was impressive. I have no idea what it meant, but there was lots of what we actors call positive energy.

‘I won a beautiful baby competition.’

That was Damian and I
was
beginning to judge him.

‘My mum dropped me on my head when I was baby.’

Well, it didn’t damage your good looks, Carlo.

‘My left arm is one inch longer than my right,’ said Amy, giggling winningly as if that were her only flaw. Physically, it probably was. I can’t say that I was warming to
Amy.

‘My left boob is
at least
one inch smaller than my right,’ I said because I had temporarily gone out of my mind.

I had certainly laid myself open to others. The guys laughed, Amy looked faux shocked and Lana cringed and whispered in my ear, ‘Me too.’

Havelski just stared into his coffee morosely.

‘
Okaaaay
,’ said Janey, ‘I think we all know each other a bit better now. Time to get you guys warmed up. Form a circle, everyone. Now who here does yoga?’

Amy and Damian’s hands went up like rockets. I’d say Amy pipped him to the post. Carlo raised his arm at a much slower pace (the movement equivalent of a drawl – sexy) and
– almost apologetically – so did Lana.

‘
Greaaat
,’ said Janey, ‘so who wants to lead us all in some stretches?’

No prizes for guessing that Amy was up for that.

So we did Downward Dog, we did the Warrior, we did Boat, we did the Cobra, we did Child’s Pose. When I say ‘we did’, I mean that some of us did (rather beautifully – how
the hell Amy managed it in skinny jeans, even stretchy ones, was beyond me, but she did) while others of us (basically, me and Alex) failed miserably and got the giggles. Weirdly, the more I
humiliated myself, the less nervous I felt. Janey only stepped in when Amy tried to make us all follow her into the Crow; the Crow would have finished me off.

We’d got all the yoga stuff out of the way and we’d played some pretty standard improv games and we’d run around a bit so that even Amy was hot and sweaty and
had started to forget that her hair was meant to be perfect. Basically, they gave us three hours to muck around and chill out a bit.

The afternoon was for script work. We all had the same sides, two scenes, both short, between Straker and Jan. For once, we were all doing the scenes in front of each other, swapping partners
around. That wasn’t as daunting as it sounds because once you’ve done Downward Dog in front of someone anything goes. There was a quarrel scene and a love scene.

The quarrel scene was short.

It was good starting with the fight scene because we were so pumped with adrenalin that it was kind of a relief to swear and shout. The pace was fast, no time to get uptight.
The love scene was the one we were more worried about. It wasn’t a full-on love scene, nothing really happened, but we knew that it was a big point in the script because it was the first
scene where the romantic connection between Straker and Jan was really brought out and you realized that it was going to be a love story (possibly a tragic love story given the whole world-ending,
flesh-eating scenario).

I was first up with Damian so we hadn’t seen how anyone else was tackling it. We started off OK, although I probably enjoyed calling him a fool more than I should have
done; I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t the fight scene. Then we got to the line ‘I won’t let you down’ and Damian, well, I don’t know how else to put
it, he lunged.

It was a pretty effective guerrilla attack; I had zero chance of escape. His mum had obviously advised him to ‘really go for it’ before the audition so he had
really
gone for
it. His technique was pretty pragmatic, well suited to a not particularly hot teenage boy. He’d obviously calculated that he had about three seconds before a girl would work out what was
happening so, instead of going for a slow, romantic, lean-in and an exchange of romantic, sensuous looks of longing, he just sort of
fell
straight in the direction of my face, hoping my lips
would be where he expected and he might just make contact. He did. Unfortunately, my teeth were also there.

He ‘kept calm and carried on’ (probably another of his mother’s mantras) and started on stage two, the face sucking followed immediately by stage three, the tongue. A
lot
of tongue. Was that
normal
? How were you meant to breathe doing this? What if I suffocated? Would the production’s insurance cover lunge-related deaths?

How did I get him to stop?

‘STOP!’ bellowed Havelski. ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’

Damian leapt away from me as if he had been electrocuted, I gasped for breath and we both stood there, looking like primary-school kids who had been hauled before the headmaster.

‘One, you . . . you . . .’ He looked over at Rhona who muttered, ‘Damian,’ nervously. ‘You,
Damian
, do NOT kiss . . .’ He looked over at Rhona who
mouthed my name. ‘. . . Elektra unless and until the script tells you to kiss her. Where does the script say Jan kisses Straker? Nowhere. The reason it does not say Jan kisses Straker is
because at this point in the script
Jan does not kiss Straker
. Are you the scriptwriter? Are you a better scriptwriter than the scriptwriter who is working on this project and has worked on
a dozen high-grossing Hollywood movies? I can answer those questions for you – no and no.’

Wow, Havelski was intimidating. My legs were actually shaking and I’m pretty sure that hadn’t been caused by anything Damian had done.

‘Two,’ he went on, ‘
I
did not tell you to kiss her. Three, if you had to kiss her, you should have kissed her properly. That wasn’t a kiss, that was an
ASSAULT.’ (He’d obviously had the same insurance freak-out.)

There was complete silence in the room for several very long minutes. Poor Damian, he might never lunge again, ever. Which was probably not a bad thing.

‘But I thought you were testing for chemistry,’ he said in a tiny little voice.

‘Well, Damian, you have a lot to learn about women if you thought that kiss demonstrated chemistry.’

This time there was some laughter, nervous laughter. I wasn’t laughing.

‘I presume you have kissed a girl before?’

Damian nodded sulkily.

Please don’t let him ask me if I’d kissed a guy before. Please.

He didn’t. ‘Sorry about all this, Elektra.’

‘It’s OK,’ I mumbled, resisting a very strong inclination to add ‘Sir’ to the end of my sentence.

‘In a way, you’re right, Damian. Part of the reason all six of you are here together in this meeting
is
so that we can watch how you relate to each other and what sort of
“chemistry” there is between you. You’ve all had a script synopsis; you know that Jan and Straker fall in love. They do kiss and down the line, whatever actors are cast, we will
talk about that and we’ll talk to your parents about it. But that is not for today. What is important in Jan and Straker’s story is
love
. They fall in love when everything around
them is in pieces and that love is the only thing that makes the audience believe that things might get a little better.’