by TJ Klune
A few things stopped that from happening.
First, Josiah Erickson’s life was absolutely not a musical.
He couldn’t sing.
It was cloudy.
There was only a homeless man pushing a shopping cart down the sidewalk.
And California was in the middle of a severe drought, so fireworks were illegal.
But still.
“I have an audition for a movie!” he exclaimed to the homeless man.
“That’s great!” the homeless man replied. “I was abducted by aliens when I was twenty-six, and they implanted a device in my head that makes me see ghosts!”
“Whoa,” Josy said. “You win. I don’t have any cash, but I have this coupon for McDonald’s that I can’t use since I’m going to be in a movie and have to watch my diet. You can have it.”
The man took the coupon and smiled at him. He was missing a tooth, and Josy thought it gave him character. “Thanks! There’s a man standing next to you who says he was murdered in this exact spot fifty-seven years ago by a falling piano dropped by his business partner who was having an affair with his wife. Have a great day!” He whistled as he pushed the shopping cart away.
Josy looked over his shoulder.
There was nothing there.
But that was okay.
Because he was going to nail this audition.
“JESUS CHRIST,” Xander moaned the next night. “Why in the hell are we watching this? It’s Saturday and none of us are working. Why aren’t we going out?”
Josy scowled as he paused the movie playing on the television in Xander’s house. On the screen, a man attempted to look terrified while wearing nothing but a loincloth and running away from a gigantic radioactive Claymation aardvark on the deck of the Titanic. Granted, the aardvark looked fake as fuck and the Titanic was obviously a large tugboat in a parking lot getting sprayed with a couple of hoses. And yes, okay, maybe the guy’s hair was feathered, and the costumes weren’t exactly appropriate for the time period, but still. “This is research,” Josy insisted, annoyed he’d had to stop the film for what had to be the seven hundredth time. He was sitting on an ottoman right in front of the TV, trying to soak in the atmosphere. “I need to know what I could expect before the audition on Tuesday. It’s important, Xander.”
“Dude’s hot,” Serge said, squinting at the screen from his spot next to Xander on the couch. His eyes were bloodshot. He’d been smoking since early afternoon. He’d offered his pipe to Josy when he arrived, but Josy had refused. He needed all his faculties while he prepared for what was probably going to be the biggest moment of his life. “I like his bangs.” He paused, considering. Then he giggled in that way he only did when he was really high. “I’d like him to bang me. Get it? Because of the bangs. Yeah. You get it. I want pizza rolls.” He pushed himself up from the couch and wandered toward the kitchen.
“Important,” Xander repeated. “You think this is important. A revisionist take on the sinking of the Titanic that involves aardvarks the size of buildings. This is important.”
“Yes,” Josy said promptly.
Xander sighed as he looked toward the ceiling. “Okay, Josy.”
A crash came from the kitchen. Silence. Then, “My bad! Apparently the drawers come out and fall on the ground when you pull them really hard. I don’t know why I’m even looking in the drawer. That’s not where pizza rolls are supposed to be.”
Xander rolled his eyes as he turned his head back to Josy. “I don’t even have pizza rolls.”
“You gonna tell him?”
Xander shrugged. “Nah. He’ll get distracted by something else in a minute and will forget all about them. You know how he gets when smokes.”
“Lucky,” Josy muttered. He looked at the cached pipe longingly where it lay on the coffee table before he shook his head. No. He needed to focus. “I want to—”
His phone beeped. He swiped the screen and pulled up the text thread. The new message said, Gussy’s yelling at aardvarks on TV. Sez its not historically accurate. No aardvarks on titanic?
Mybe n cargo bay? Josy wrote back.
Oh, Casey replied. Makes sense. Gus sez movie is dumb, but I kno he likes it. He’s excited 4 u. I am 2.
Josy grinned. Thnks.
Other messages waited for him under a different thread called W3Q.
B1: Oh dear, why do his clothes always fall off?
B2: I am going to burn our television. I hope you’re happy.
B3: This is positively delightful. I hope you get to run naked on a boat.
Hopefully! he wrote in response.
“What are you smiling about?” Xander asked suspiciously.
“Our people are pretty awesome,” he said, setting his phone back down.
“I can’t believe Gus had two copies of this movie at his store,” Xander muttered. “Or that they agreed to watch it at the same time.”
“It’s research,” Josy said again. “The more I know about the type of movies Roger Fuller makes, the better position I’ll be in.”
“He’s only the producer,” Xander said, picking up the partial script from next to Serge’s pipe. “What about this guy? Quincy Moore. Any idea who he is?”
“Nope. I googled him, but all I got was the Kickstarter page. The only thing it said about him was that he was young and that it was his first script. I couldn’t find anything else about him.”
“Could be a pseudonym,” Xander said, leafing through the script.
“For someone famous,” Josy whispered to himself.
“What was that?”
“Uh. Nothing. It doesn’t matter. They asked for me, Xander. Do you know how crazy that is?”
Xander sighed as he dropped the script back on the table. “I know. I just… I don’t want anything to happen to you. You know? You’re….”
“I’m what?”
Xander rubbed the back of his neck. “You’re… naïve. Sometimes. And that’s okay!” he added quickly as Josy started to frown. “You’re just—you don’t see things like other people do. And normally that’s pretty rad, but I don’t want to see you get hurt. I know you think this is your big break or whatever—”
“I don’t think it. I know it.”
“That’s good,” Xander said, not unkindly. “And I hope you’re right. I need you to be careful, though, okay? Starla said this Roger guy is a tool.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can. That doesn’t mean I’m still not going to worry. I don’t want you to get taken advantage of with something you really want dangling over your head. You’re good, Josy. Really good. I always knew you’d make it someday. I just hope it’s for the right reasons.” He looked away. “All of us do. It’s why Casey and Gus and the We Three Queens are watching the movie too.”
Xander was all hard lines and scowls. He was a dick. He could be coarse and blunt to the point of being mean. But sometimes he could be awesome, so much so that Josy couldn’t help but hug him.
Like right now.
Xander gave a cursory protest as Josy tackled him on the couch, but he didn’t really mean it. He wrapped his arms around Josy’s back, holding him in place. Josy tucked his head under Xander’s chin and breathed in happily. They didn’t do this often—not like he and Casey used to do before he moved to Oregon—but when it happened, it was good. It was really good.
“Oh man, I am so going to get in on that,” Serge said from the entryway to the kitchen. He was munching on baby carrots. “We need to combine our energies, you know? Get our auras in sync. You better make room for me. I swear to god I am going to cuddle the shit out of both of you for at least the next hour before I fall asleep.”
And you know what?
They did exactly that.
(It wasn’t until much, much later that he realized he hadn’t thought of Q-Bert at all that day. Which, of course, promptly made Josy think about Q-Bert for the rest of the night. His brain was so weird.)
JOSIAH ERICKSON was ready.
He was going to nail this audition.
He was going to get the role.
He was going to become famous.
He was going to get rich.
And then he was going to start a charity to help homeless children feed starving whales or whatever.
“You have arrived at your destination,” Waze announced on his phone. “Boodely-boop.”
Josiah gulped as he looked ahead.
Maybe he was completely out of his depth.
Yes, he’d had an idea of what he was in for when he’d seen the address was located in Hollywood Hills. While not completely ritzy, it was still far above his tax bracket (though if he thought about it, he wasn’t quite sure what his tax bracket was). The homes were older and often gated. And the farther into the neighborhood he went, the bigger they got.
Waze just happened to announce he had arrived in front of the biggest one yet.
It sat far back off the road down a long driveway lined with thick bushes. The house itself looked like it had turrets, and Josy wondered if this was where the orgy/cocaine parties occurred. He looked down at himself, hoping he wasn’t underdressed. Or possibly overdressed, if what Starla had told him about Roger Fuller was true. He’d spent the night before freaking out on the phone to Gustavo, who made Casey look up what to wear to an audition that could be a big break. For some reason, Gustavo gave explicit instructions for Casey to avoid a Wiki something-something, but Josy had no idea what he was talking about.
Gustavo had put him on speaker, and they both listened to Casey as he read off from an undoubtedly reputable source that Josy should dress for the part, if possible. The problem with that was Josy wasn’t quite sure what the part was. The script he was given said he was trying out for a character named Liam, who was listed in a brief description as an everyman from anywhere facing life-changing events.
Josy had asked if that meant a cowboy hat, and immediately began to panic because he didn’t have a cowboy hat, and it was already almost midnight on a Monday, and where the hell was he going to find a cowboy hat this late?
Fortunately Gustavo and Casey vetoed the cowboy hat.
So here he was, sitting in his shitty car outside a black gate that was probably made of ground diamonds, and he was wearing maroon skinny jeans, boots, and a gray sweater over an untucked dress shirt.
It was ninety degrees outside at ten in the morning, but Casey had said he looked cute, and Gustavo had said they were hanging up now because he had a business to run, and that business was not offering style advice over Facetagram or PictureSnap or whatever the heck app it was that Casey made him download that added absolutely nothing to his life.
Also, the air-conditioning in Josy’s car was broken.
He was sweating.
It probably wasn’t a good look.
Unless the role was like any of the other Roger Fuller movies and he would have to be running away from monsters a lot. If that were the case, then he would be sweating a lot. Which meant he looked perfect for the role.
It was quite the conundrum.
He reached up and pulled down the sun visor, checking to make sure his mustache and beard were still as perfect as they’d been that morning. Maybe his mustache was a little wilted, but he still looked good. He had this.
He had this.
He pulled up next to a black box in front of the gate. There was an intercom above a button. And naturally, as one does, he miscalculated how close he needed to be to reach it. He groaned as he put his car in Park and leaned out the window, grunting as he barely hit the button with the tip of his finger.
A buzzer sounded.
Silence.
More silence.
Then a static-filled voice said, “Yes?”
“Uh,” Josy said, unsure if he needed to put his mouth right on the box. Since that didn’t seem sanitary, he decided against it and hoped for the best. “I’m here for an audition? My name is—”
“Pull in and park by all the others.”
The box buzzed again, and the gate swung open as Josy mouthed all the others to himself.
He hadn’t been so naïve as to think that he would be the only one auditioning, even if they had asked for him by name. He figured there’d be others up for the same part. But all the others didn’t do much to settle his nerves as he drove down the driveway, gravel crunching underneath the tires.
He was relieved to see only about a dozen vehicles parked to the right of the house in a paved lot. Most of them were nicer than his. Gustavo had tried to tell him that there were forums for cars like theirs online, but he hadn’t had time to look any of them up. He wasn’t sure what people who drove decades-old Toyotas would have to talk about, aside from how sad they were. He could already do that with his friends.
He parked and got out of the car. He blinked up at the house in front of him in the harsh sunlight.
Those were definitely turrets.
He was a little out of his depth, both financially and spiritually.
“You can do this,” he whispered to himself as he straightened the tail of his shirt. “Do or do not. There is no try.”
He squared his shoulders.
He stuck out his chin.
He was calm.
He was cool.
He was confident.
He walked into the car door he’d forgotten to shut.
“What the frig, man,” he growled, rubbing his knee. “So not cool, dude. Come on!”
He shut the door.
Now he was ready, even if it felt like his knee was most likely broken and he was going to lose his leg.
HE EXPECTED the doorbell chime to be epic. He was not disappointed.
But before he could marvel on the chimes that rang inside the house, the door opened and there, with a smile on her face, stood—
“Dee?” Josy asked, surprised. “Are you real?”
Dee rolled her eyes. “Yes, Josiah. I’m real.”
“Oh. Because, like. You’re here. And so am I. And that’s… weird.”
“You’re wearing a sweater in September in Southern California. I don’t know if you’re the best judge of weird.”
Josy looked down. “Is it too much? Gustavo and Casey said I needed to dress for the part, but since I have no idea what the part is, I just dressed like a fancier version of myself.”
She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him inside, shutting the door behind them. “It’s fine. You look fine. If I was into stoner hipsters with penises, I would probably consider trying to get all up on that.”
“Oh. That’s… swell. Thank you. I think. I just want to be friends, though. I mean, no offense. You seem nice.”
“I’m not hitting on you.”
“That’s good,” he said, relieved. “I’m not very good at figuring out when people are doing that.”
“That’s an understatement,” she muttered, tugging him down a long hallway.
He barely had time to take in his surroundings, gauche though they were. Everything seemed to be made of crystal and feathers and large black-and-white nude prints of men in various poses that looked mostly painful. The walls and floors were dark wood, and Josy only caught glimpses through open doorways of offices and entertainment rooms and what looked to be a room filled with nothing but beanbags, something Josy desperately wanted to go into.
“What are you doing here?” Josy asked Dee as she pulled him around a corner. “Is this your house? Did I go to the wrong place? My bad. I do that sometimes.”
She glanced back at him, a strange glint in her eyes. “You didn’t go to the wrong place. I don’t live here. This is part of my job.”
“It is? What is it you—” A thunderous thought struck him. “Oh my god, hey. Dude. Look. I need to talk to you! I stalked Q-Bert online because I felt bad about the whole—”
“Being an asshole and laughing in his face thing when he tried to ask you out even though he was scared out of his mind and you probably set him back a good three years?”
Josy
blanched. “Uh. Yeah. That. Has anyone ever told you that you’re really good at making people feel worse about themselves? Because you are, in case you didn’t know. I can be a reference if you ever put that on your résumé.”
She laughed. “Good to know I can depend on you. Josiah, are you a bastard?”
“Uh, no? I mean, my mother and father are still married, if that’s what you’re asking. Is this for the movie—”
“Hoo boy,” she muttered. Then, “Are you a dick?”
“I don’t think so. Being stoned usually makes me want to be nice to everyone.” He felt the blood drain from his face. “Not that I’m stoned right now. Or ever. Okay, that was a lie. The second part, not the first. I swear I’m not stoned. But if I have to take a drug test, I absolutely will not pass. Did you know that if you’re bald, they take your pubic hair instead? I can’t imagine someone trying to pluck out my pubes to see if I’m stoned. Like, dude. I’ll just tell you I am.” He coughed. “Though not right now. Because this is an audition and that would be bad.”
“Christ. This is really how you are, isn’t it? It wasn’t an act at the library.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know how to be anyone else but me. Except when I’m acting, and then I can be anyone else.”
She stopped and stared. “How have you survived in this town for so long?”
He grinned. “Do or do not. There is no try.”
She gaped.
He grinned less.
“Here’s how this is going to go,” she said after she’d recovered. “Quincy doesn’t know you’re here. This was all my doing, with the assist from Roger. But if Quincy gets upset, this is your fault.”
“I can dig that. I have no idea what you’re talking about, but count me in. Also, who’s Quincy?”
“Who’s Quincy,” she repeated slowly.
A light bulb went on in the attic of Josy’s mind. It was mostly covered in cobwebs and wasn’t very energy efficient, but it still worked. “Oh! The screenwriter. Right. Why doesn’t he know I’m here? Also, can we still talk about Q-Bert? I really think I need to explain myself better. You need to tell him the next time you see him that I’m really nice and that I didn’t mean to like that photo on his Insta from last year. My thumb slipped because Frank’s a dick and wouldn’t leave me alone.”