Actor: A Novel in Three Parts

"Hot out there?"

The equity monitor, who looked to be a freshman in college, asked me this.

"Indeed," I replied.

Heat emanated from my skin. My pits were soaked. I could feel the sweat pouring out of me from the weirdest, most random parts of my body. Still…I was trying my best to act cheery, presentable, and professional. As an actor, I never knew who I was talking to or who was listening. Who was watching. One negative reaction under the watchful eye of the theatre community, and the scene could potentially spread like wildfire, dooming me as an undesirable...difficult...cancelled.

As subtly as I could, I wiped my brow and smiled at them.

"Name?" they asked.

Her dirty blonde and brown hair—dyed heavily—hung over her thin shoulders in meandering waves and curls. Messy, short shag like she had just rolled out of the shower. At the same time, she very well could have been hastily walking down the streets of New York in the spring with an iced coffee to a modeling gig. The mid‑2010s “messy shag” or “model‑off‑duty” waves look. She seemed annoyed to be there, but it easily could have been something else. Maybe, I thought, she believed she deserved to be somewhere better.

"Ave," I smiled, meekly but assured that I was in fact me.

She looked down at her fresh new white iPad. I assumed there was some version of the call sheet in there. Her single pointer finger with a silver ring swiped up and down on the screen.

"Last name?"

I looked over my shoulder, then to my left and right. The line had split up into three separate ones. Through the sea of needy, wanting, yearning bodies, I spotted the one guy with the beer. He was now beer-less, but standing for some mysterious reason on one leg, a few back from his check-in table. Everyone else, to me at least, was unknown.

"Gardener."

"Ave Gardener," she repeated.

"Yes," she said. "I see you here." She playfully pointed to my line. "That name sounds familiar—have you auditioned here before?"

"Here?"

"Yes."

"...yes," I lied. "A few times, yes, sure, of course...many times."

She looked me up and down, squinting. I sensed she was affronted by my sweat-drenched wardrobe, the cheap short-sleeved collared shirt, and too-tight slacks that made me look more like a door-to-door missionary than Lee. Was she waiting for me to turn around so she could text the casting director? Something like: the one who looks like he got hit with a water balloon and is on his way to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Or: Did Edie Gardener's kid ever get burned in a fire? Or maybe she recognized Edie’s name.

"I'm doomed," I muttered. “Shame and confusion…all is on the rout.”

"What was that?"

"There are a lot of people about. I’m glad I made it.”

"I'm glad too," she said, coyly smiling.

What was that? Had I read her all wrong? Was she into me?

My vision finally cleared so I was able to read her name tag—Daryn Summer. ASSISTANT'S ASSISTANT was printed in bold beneath it. What did that mean? Her title put me on a weird edge. Who was this person? What power did she have? Would this interaction be remembered and passed on…was I worrying about nothing? These questions spun within me like a bad tequila shot while all I wanted—all I needed—was to focus on the audition at hand.