Actor: A Novel in Three Parts

Around 2, the other actors and I began to get uncomfortable waiting outside the theatre. I was an hour early, but they hadn't opened the doors. On the glass, a piece of binder paper read, "BACK SOON." No one knew what that meant, only that whoever was supposed to be there and running everything was nowhere to be found. I was new to the city and already landing a potential booking, so there was no room for me to complain. Everyone else? They were doing that for me.

"Fuckin' terrible leaving us out here like this," one actor in front of me said, straightening his dark blue suit. "Undignified, unjustified...fuckin' criminal."

It looked like he was reading for Austin. Counting him, there were six actors ahead of me with a whole line of others behind. Dark blue suit was vocally the most pissed but the way everyone was shuffling around, I sensed the rest were too.

Another actor, maybe five feet tall in nothing but cut-off jean shorts and a tank top, was literally drinking a beer. He was right over my shoulder. When I had absently turned around to feign staring at the sky, I noticed their face was swollen red like a bruised tomato. The same went for their eyes. His hair was thin and disheveled, with a monk-sized bald spot in the middle of his head. He almost didn't seem real...like someone who had made their choice about their lifestyle long ago and had zero intention of ever changing. He was definitely reading for Lee. After another "random" glance of mine, he spoke to me.

"Want some?" he asked, holding up the beer bottle.

"Would love to," I said, trying my hardest to look cool. "But I'm more terrible than I already am if I've been drinking."

"Unlucky for you," he said, pulling the beer back. "Exact opposite. What's your name?"

"Ave," I said, turning my entire self around to face him.

I withheld my last name, but I doubted he even knew who Edie was.

"Like Avenue?"

"Like "Hail Mary," I replied.

"That's pretty cool."

His gaze rolled upward and his forehead scrunched. The bottle, fast in his grip, fell to his head. He appeared to be thinking deeply about something. This filled me with relief. I was so desperate to be accepted, by anyone, anything. I asked for his name.

"Andrew."

"Oh!" he snapped, appearing he had found what he was looking for. "Ave like...Ave Maria. So, it's Latin?"

"Yes," I lied simply, suddenly wanting whatever this was to end.

"Your Mom's name isn't named Maria, is she?"

"No," I half-laughed, feeling caught. "She's a woman with a woman's name like most."

I didn't even know what that meant but I let it go.

Their head cocked to one side. Then, he shrugged.

"Same," he said, and turned around as he finished off the rest of the beer, leaning against the wall of the theatre.

Leaving my apartment early may have been a mistake. I had given myself three hours, afraid that the Chicago train line—"the L" as the locals called it—was going confuse me. It did, but not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to with a one-way ride from my stop on the Red Line to North/Clybourn. In new places, I never gave myself the benefit of the doubt or trusted I would figure it out. I couldn't run lines alone in my apartment anymore. At some point, preparation becomes a crutch...a false notion of action—of acting!—and eventually, procrastination.

The heat rippled off the sidewalk in waves as noticed more actors line up behind me. I was seventh or so. Besides Andrew no one seemed interested in exchanging information or even a name. We nodded soft, cordial hellos, but that was it. Territory, perhaps...or maybe they didn't care because I could be gone as soon as I arrived. Actors meet a lot of people and see a lot of faces they never see again. One can get jaded by so much humanity, which, to be melodramatic and emo, is sad, but true.

My shirt clung to my back. I wasn't in LA anymore...this was a different kind of heat—heavy and still and relentless—with zero breeze to negotiate with. Nothing like San Francisco which was either foggy or bearable with its heat being so close to the bay. There was something demoralizing about the humidity...something in it that made me want to surrender and turn myself over. Steadying myself occasionally on the hot stone concrete of the building, I draped my light Levi's jacket over my arm and held the side in my other hand, reading my lines squinting against the flat white sky.

This was all worth it, I told myself. There is no other path.

An image of Edie standing at the crescent-moon bay windows of our living room, looking up at the same sky in San Francisco, came to me. She was holding something tightly in her clenched fist. Her back was to me, but from the subtle movement around her jaw, I could tell she was speaking. What was she saying? I wondered. The actor right in front of me turned around and asked if I had a cigarette.

"In this heat?" I joked, like I knew them.

Their head jutted backwards, annoyed. "Is that a yes or a no?"

"Uh...no," I answered, looking down at myself immediately to hide my embarrassment. "I don't. Sorry about that."

"California doesn't have a cigarette..." they murmured. "Bet he can't even throw a snowball."

Was this a joke or an outright attack? I didn't know whether to defend myself or play along. Paralyzed, I begged for mercy.

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"Your tanned," they said, to the point but also, genuine. "And you have those California wisps of gold in your hair—sun stains. And you're smiling."

I sensed jealously, but also...scorn? I played along.

"Chicagoans don't smile?"

"We do," they said, suspicious and annoyed at my confidence with our rapport. "Easier if we know you first, but we do, especially if it's summer."

"Why I was shocked you wanted a cigarette in this heat."

"Right," they said. "Back to that...you don't have one?"

I told them once again...no.

They turned around, and said after a second, "Thanks anyway. Good luck in there."

With my credibility with that individual completely shot, I focused on the words in front of me, imagining the scene and my movements as the sweat gathered at the back of my neck.

As I opened my mouth and my tonsils quivered, I felt threatened by heat exhaustion. The simple, logo-less collared shirt I had on along with my light brown khakis and chukka boots were throbbing. After the chat with my friend in front of me, there was no talk among the other actors...just the soft whisper of everyone reciting their lines. They seemed focused. They seemed, except for a few, unbothered.

Cars drove by on the street beside us and stared sorrowfully, like we were captured soldiers waiting in line to get executed. Back in LA, I knew everybody and everybody knew me. We had things to talk about, gossip about—bitch about. Here, of course—by choice—I had none of that. I felt like an intruder. Someone ahead murmured something. I strained to hear, but the heat snatched it away.

Actors are whores, Edie often told me. Starving for any pair of eyes and ears that will let them tell the story of their character because, in truth, it is the story of their lives...of all of our lives.

There we were, faceless and listless, enflamed in the bright white light of it all, adjusting and readjusting our shirts, our pants, our socks, and our underwear...all for a chance to perform.

I looked down and noticed the black ink of the side starting to smear from the sweat that had dripped from my forehead. The lines were all in there, in my head, but still a jolt of panic hit me. What if I forgot something? What if in the moment I needed them, they left me? Suddenly, my phone rang. A few actors looked on with absolute disgust. The guy who called me out for being from California didn't even bother to turn around, but I could feel his loathing. He'd already let me have it and if wanted to give me more, he could. In all that heat and light, I put up a hand to signal in apology. I wasn't going to answer. No verbal response from any of them. Just hot, piercing hate. Maybe a few, indifferent shrugs.

After a few minutes, I checked my phone. Shockingly, a message from Dean. Good luck! followed by a heart emoji. That surprised me. 2:37. Twenty or so more minutes, so I began again with my lines again.

"You got coffee?" I murmured to myself. "Yeah. 'At's good. Real coffee? From the bean?"

The cigarette guy in front of me half-turned. "Hey."

"Hey," I said, still eager for some kind of interaction.

"If you had that cigarette I probably wouldn't give a shit, but would you mind?"

"Mind?"

"Mind not doing that," he iterated. "Sorry, but if you don't got it now, you won't have it in there."

They didn't wait for my response to turn around.

I folded up the side and started to slide the paper into my pocket, shaken to my core. Struggling, pushing the stuff to fit, a gust of wind crashed into me. Both arms shot up. I felt the paper pinched between my fingers release and get ripped away. Instantly, the white of the paper, black of the text, and bright yellow of my highlights sink into the light blue of the sky, soaring up and up and up until it dissolved and was absorbed. I looked around at this attack by Mother Nature. No one noticed. No one cared. Chest tight and frozen, I gathered myself by desperately buttoning and re-buttoning my cheap egg-white collared shirt and brought my arms across my chest to hug myself. I squeezed as if trying to strangle myself and hopefully crush my lungs. Then, my phone buzzed again. Another text.

I could barely read Tim's name on the screen with what were probably tears mixed with sweat.

You make it?

Hurriedly, I answered: Yes. I lost my side. The wind took it. Mother Nature is out to get me.

The wind?

YES.

You're memorized. You're prepared. And if you need another side just get it from one of their assistants. You know better than to have that shit with you up there anyway.

My hand holding the phone was quivering. A hushed, distant voice told me it was all over...that there were omens that should not be ignored. It wasn't Edie. It was someone else. Something else.

The tiny gray bubble of an incoming text appeared.

At this point, Tim wrote. Notes are for jokes. You're fine. Roar.

I will, I recited within. I felt Lee's spite mix with my anger and resentment for being left out in the heat, the other actors—all of it. Don't worry about me. I'm not the one to worry about. An airplane overhead roared by. I mean I can uh—I saw the candlelight on Austin's tabletop, then their mother's kitchen. I smelled the hot, sandy desert air flowing in from outside. For a moment, I was there, in the scene, and everything around me—all the noise and the pain—faded to a neutral place of silence. I was alone to work again. I thought of Austin's line and a scoff bubbled from my throat. My head wagged side to side in pity, judgment, disbelief that Austin, my brother, would make such a pathetic attempt to be nice to me. I suddenly felt clean and sure of myself, just as I knew Lee felt out in all that desert. I wanted what he had, and I would get it.

"You always work by candlelight?" I whispered, the words escaping between my lips.

Two hard prods on the back of my shoulder.

"Hey, man," a voice said behind me. "Move up. I think the door opened."

I looked up at the double doors. Still shut. Nothing had changed.

"I don't think it did," I said, not bothering to turn around.

"Move up anyway," the voice said. "Closer to the light."

I took a single step.

"That good?"

"Yeah. However close you can."

The light was enclosed in a small square box and shone faded yellow from above the double doors. There was a conviction in the way pure glow invited the heat as we all spun around in our delirium, into its embrace. Flailing and scattered like the pages of my script now up in the sky, I had tumbled from one end of the country to the next, no longer wanted or desired anywhere—at least not yet. I would have to fight for that. And yet, even if that day did come, if it did in fact arrive and I had convinced myself that I had been made whole and realized by the acceptance of the industry—acting, theatre, and other actors—I sensed I could be thrust back into the light and darkness of day and night's sky just as fast. Focus on the yellow light, I told myself. The light, to the other actors and me, we were all reaching for with eager children, clamoring for the cookies in the cookie jar just within reach.

Another line came to me.

"Different kind of heat," I whispered. I dug my heels into the concrete, rolled my shoulders back, felt the top corner of my lip curl.

"Different kind of heat..." I repeated. "Different kind of heat...out there...different kind...out there it's..."

My throat clenched. I stammered. I forgot the line.

What's the line? What's the line? What's the goddamn line?

Forgetting a line—in an audition or a show—feels like stumbling on the verge of collapse. If I was with someone, an acting partner or a sympathetic reader, maybe they would understand. But when you're by yourself, there's no net. I searched every corner of my mind, trying to visualize the words on the page, coming up with nothing. The words can just as soon be there as not, with no one to blame but your inadequacies.

"Different kind of heat out there in...out there it's...it's...fuck."

I instinctually went to take out the side, but remembered it was gone.

I started from the top, reciting slowly what I knew. I imagined myself on stage, shoulders rolled forward, back arched like I had practiced at the apartment. One leg started to shake and it became Lee's leg out in the desert, all alone in the darkness underneath the stars. He was looking at something in the distance. He didn't know what it was or where exactly it was, but something told him he could get there eventually. Lee would do anything to get there.

A thick, tangible jealousy began to boil in me, then disdain. I looked up at the unforgiving sun. There was no comfort. There was no guidance—just a beating. This was where they thought we belonged. The thought only made me angrier.

"Use it," I whispered and licked my dry lips.

I tried to think back on a specific memory: Edie sitting in a chair on a bare stage. A single white light shone on her from above, brightening her already soft, hot-chocolate hair. The light itself was raw and unbreakable, like how a cloud tricks you into thinking it's solid. She had her loose-fitting blue 501 jeans on and a see-through white V-neck. Her feet were bare, the shade they always were: latte with brushstrokes of pink. Her legs were spread in a power stance, both eyes locked on me. I was somewhere in the back of the theatre in a worn red velvet seat.

"All the feeling in the world..." Her voice curled through the burgundy satin of the stage curtains. "Don't mean a thing if you don't get that line on your mark."

I was too scared to ask why.

"The words of the playwright, the play," Edie continued, "are the bridges that everything—" She stood violently and stamped her foot. I remembered jolting. "Everything is carried upon! They are the one thing that saves you when everything else goes to shit up here, and I promise you, it will. Now get here and recite what I taught you again."

"Yes, Mom," I mouthed, opening my eyes to a world on fire.

Then, the words I thought I had forgotten came.

"Different kinda' heat," I said. "Out there it's clean. Cools off at night. There's a nice little breeze."

Two more prods hammered my shoulder.

"We're not moving!" I said. "The door isn't open."

The guy jeered. I saw his face. It was thick with some kind of beige makeup. His hair was messy in that manicured way. I wanted to punch him, but that was Lee. That was Lee. That was Lee and not me.

"Yeah, it is," the actor said, nodding past me.

I looked at the door.

The yellow light poured onto sidewalk and over the now moving bodies of the other actors.

We were going in.