by Sarah Lassez
And, apparently, I was this director’s dream. “Great,” he said when I told him I was okay being topless. “You’re the only actress we’re considering for the role.”
I was momentarily stunned, and then completely exhilarated. Right as I was about to say something like “Finally!” he continued with, “No one else will do the nudity.”
He realized his mistake when I gasped sharply. After listening to him stumble about, trying to get out of what he’d just said, I laughed it off. Really, who cares? I needed a job.
I left feeling pretty good. For the first time in years I felt certain I would land the role, or at least be seriously considered. This sentiment was quickly trampled to death when Holly informed me of the director’s concerns. It appeared that now that he’d met me in person, he had concerns about my stature. I’m petite. Short. Whatever. I’m no midget, but I’m five-two, which doesn’t exactly put me in the Amazon category. In the script there’s one line that refers to Karina as being tall. One line. This, to my horror, was cause for some serious consideration on the director’s part, and my response was to immediately call Aurelia.
“Will I be offered the role of Karina in the film Until the Night?” Over the years I’d learned to be very specific about such questions. Saying you want to know if you’ll get a job soon could easily be misconstrued by the very busy and often very ironic universe as meaning any job, and “soon” could be viewed as relative to your entire life…so, best to include as many details as possible.
Aurelia sighed, never a good sign from a psychic. “I don’t think so. No. You’ll be disappointed. There’s something blocking him from giving you that role, but I feel like he’ll offer you something else. Is there a smaller role he could give you?”
Of course, I should’ve known I’d be playing the insubstantial French girl after all. To be sure Aurelia wasn’t just in a bad mood when pulling my cards, I busted out my own deck, but no matter how many different ways I asked the same question, there was no swaying the message: I was not getting this job.
A few days later I was about to get in my afternoon bath when Holly called. “You got it,” she said, her voice as excited as it could possibly get. Holly, by nature, never gets very excited. Next to her my calmest state sounds absolutely hysterical. “They’re offering you the role of Karina.”
“Yeah?” Obviously she was mistaken; this could get embarrassing. I shook my newest gardenia bath salt into the tub, breathing in to see how badly I’d overpaid. This salt was seriously expensive and supposedly from the Dead Sea. Why had I bought it? Something, I realized, was undeniably wrong with me. I’d drive past a grocery store with longing, wishing I could afford to stop and eat, but then spot a beauty supply store across the street and practically leap from my car as it was still screeching to a halt. Why didn’t this smell like gardenia?
“Hello?” Holly said. “They’re offering you the part of Karina?”
“I thought I was too short.”
“I guess he changed his mind.”
I waved my hand in the water, trying to bring the damn bath salts to life. Somewhere, hidden deep within the air, was a small trace of gardenia. I furiously shook the bottle, practically emptying the entire thing into the now very pricey bath. “Are you sure?” I said. I was trying to give her an out, one more chance to realize her mistake.
“I just got off the phone with him. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Holly was going to feel awful later, when it dawned on her that the part he’d wanted to give me was that of the flippin’ French girl. “I’m about to take a bath, that’s all.”
“Well, you got the part,” she said, sounding slightly puzzled as to why I wasn’t more excited.
“Okay.” I tried to muster a little enthusiasm for her benefit. “Well, that’s great, I guess.”
We hung up the phone and I got into my bath, reclining so far, sinking so deep, that my nose skimmed the water. There, I thought. There was the gardenia.
Two hours later it hit me. There was a chance, though slim, a miniscule flimsy little chance, that perhaps the cards weren’t right. Did I have the job? The cards weren’t always right, were they? A call to my manager (who was growing increasingly concerned) seemed to confirm it: I’d gotten the job! And though it seemed pretty obvious to everyone else that I’d definitely been cast as one of the leads, it wasn’t till I was finally on-set and about to take off my shirt that I truly believed the job was mine.
As is the case with independent films, the work was rewarding but the paychecks were like drops of water on a sizzling day. What little money I’d been paid, disappeared. I began to panic. What was I doing wrong? I examined my life, and then—to me this made perfect sense—I focused my anger on Aurelia. For years she’d been giving me false hope, setting me up for disappointment, essentially lying to me. Where was the success she’d been promising? Where was my wonderful life? Just the other day I’d agreed to take home leftovers from a dinner party simply so I could eat later. That was not supposed to happen. I was supposed to be hosting lavish dinner parties, all scraps going to my rhinestone-adorned sweater-wearing Chihuahua!
I called Aurelia in a fury and let loose a string of complaints, a barrage of failed predictions. Aurelia, as if she’d known this was coming, took it in stride.
“The problem is that the negative energy you’re projecting is blocking you from getting the roles you would otherwise get. It’s your negative attitude that’s preventing you from being successful.”
I attempted to breathe, and then calmly explained that I wouldn’t have a negative attitude if I were successful, which she’d always said I would be. Was this really going to morph into a chicken and egg debate? I was supposed to be a star! It was that simple! But no, Aurelia continued to insist I had something to do with my own failure.
“The casting people don’t know why they’re not casting you; they just feel this underlying negative energy. What you need to do is find your sparkle.”
“Sparkle?”
“Yes, sparkle. Imagine all the blackness moving up from your toes, up your body and through the top of your head. Let it out. Imagine it turning into white light. As it turns whiter and brighter, imagine it exploding and turning into golden glitter that falls back down onto you.”
I wanted to chuck the phone out the window. Of course I was being bitter and resistant, but please. No one who’s trapped in an abyss of despair wants to talk about glitter exploding over her head. To make myself feel better, I asked about my future man. Maybe if I had a wonderful love life I wouldn’t care that I was in danger of turning into one of those tragic older actresses with perilously sculpted hair and heaps of fake jewelry—that aching, overly painted woman who still tells stories of a job she had fifty years ago. And honestly, my heading in that direction was a distinct possibility, since I had a ton of worthless jewelry.
“No, Sarah.”
I blinked. “No what?”
“I’m not doing any more readings for you. You’re getting too dependent on them, and it’s not healthy.”
Not healthy? Not healthy was feeling as though you had nothing to live for, that nothing good was ever going to happen to you, that you’d be alone forever! I needed these readings to feel better, that was all. How could she say that was unhealthy? Unhealthy was not getting the readings!
I informed her that I’d do my own damn readings, and that’s exactly what I did. Nonstop. For weeks on end I shuffled the cards, actually relieved to no longer have to rely on someone else, relieved to not be accused of asking the same question over and over. If I so desired, I could ask about my future man until my fingers ached and the room went light with the rising sun, and not once would I hear “Please, Sarah, no more. I need to go; I have to sleep.” Instant gratification was another plus. Before, I’d been at the mercy of Aurelia’s schedule. Now I could have readings whenever I wanted. Ten seconds after walking in the door from an audition I could get answers to my questions: How did the director feel a
bout me? What did the producer think? Will I get the part? Will it lead to more work? The immediacy was a nice change from all the times I’d returned home and been forced to wait and stare at the phone until Aurelia returned my call.
The only downside was that after countless readings, my mind would grow wild with confusion. This reading said I wouldn’t get it, but that one an hour ago, didn’t that one say I’d get it? Better try once more….
One thing there was no doubt about was that the Knight of Wands was determined to be noticed. No matter how many times I shuffled, that one card persistently showed up in my readings, its resolve like that of an annoying neighbor who constantly pops up when you least expect it, determined to be noticed and not caring that you’ve got ice cream melting in your grocery bag. The universe, I realized, was telling me something, so I found my tarot card book and looked up the meaning.
“The Knight of Wands is physically attractive and focuses on style and look. Blond or light hair and light blue or green eyes. Someone who sparkles and glows with the fiery element of the wands.”
Sparkles? Why was this word haunting me? Wait, could it be a man who was my sparkle? Did finding my sparkle mean finding my man? My Knight of Wands? Had I cracked the code? Intuition kicked in and I knew this was a man. This was my man they were alluding to. Soon he’d be in my life. I could feel him approaching.
Locked in my room, I began chatting with the cards. “What do you think of him?” I’d ask. “You like him? Oh, good. And he’s polite? Okay, well on a scale of one to ten, how is he in bed? Really? Well, that’s certainly something to look forward to, now, isn’t it?”
Meanwhile, the messages Gina left on my answering machine were becoming increasingly fevered. “Where are you? Are you pulling cards? Put them down and pick up the phone! What’s going on?!” I was all right, I thought, still functioning in the world, still going about my daily activities and fulfilling all my obligations. The only differences were that now I had a few more readings a day—fine, many more readings a day—and that I didn’t feel like talking to Gina about my love affair with the cards or the future they predicted. What business was it of hers? What business was it of anyone’s? I was fine, and I certainly didn’t need a lecture. In a stroke of what I considered brilliance, I found the knob on the side of the answering machine and turned the volume down, thus solving the problem of her disruptive wailings. There, I thought, now let’s find out if my knight speaks a foreign language.
One day there was a loud, insistent knock on the door. Figuring it was a script, perhaps even the one that would lead to the job the cards had just predicted, I ran downstairs, and found Gina standing at the door. Without saying hello or why she was there, she pushed past me.
I followed her up the stairs and watched as she turned in the direction of my bedroom. “Where are they?” she asked.
Panic sped my steps. “Where are what?” I said innocently. “What are you doing here? You want some wine?”
Nothing could distract her, and of course she didn’t have to look hard, since the cards were spread out on my bed, in exactly the spot I’d left them just seconds before. With one swoop she gathered them all up, stuffed them in their worn and tattered box, and demanded to see the others.
“I know you’ve got more. Tell me where you’re hiding them. I’m not leaving till you tell me.”
“But what will you do with them?” The thought of the cards, my friends, discarded in a trash can, forced to nestle Gina’s empty box of American Spirits for warmth, or turn to a crumpled Diet Coke can for companionship, filled my heart with anxious sadness. “You won’t hurt them, will you?”
“No. They’re coming to live with me until you get your sanity back. I’ll return them when I think you’re ready.”
“So it’s not good-bye?”
Gina rolled her eyes. “It’s a temporary good-bye. It’s a little break, that’s all. Now, I know you’ve got an Aleister Crowley deck too.” She watched as I shuffled to my nightstand. “And the Rider Waite deck. And the Arthurian Legend. And the Tarot of the Cat People.” She nodded. “That’s it. Keep ’em coming.”
One by one I gathered the decks together and agreed to be good. One month, I was told; if I went one month without tarot, she’d release whichever hostage I chose. I eyed my Aleister Crowley deck. I agreed. I promised. I wanted her to leave.
She was halfway down the stairs when suddenly she stopped. Head tilted, a smirk on her face, she turned to me. “And the Goddess deck.”
With that, with the removal of that last deck (which I kept beneath my pillow in preparation for late-night readings), it was official: I’d just been heaved onto the wagon.
In a way it was a relief. Amid uncertainty, worry, and panic, I felt a certain amount of freedom being cardless. To celebrate my liberation, and to give myself something to do so I didn’t sit around all day missing my cards, I convinced my parents to buy me a plane ticket to visit my cousin in Paris. Before I knew it, I was in the sky, flying above clouds so thick it seemed impossible to think they wouldn’t catch us if we fell. My visit would only be for a few weeks, but these weeks were monumental in their importance, as they were the last chance I’d get to recharge my battery and prepare myself for the impending hard whack of reality. Upon my return I was going to have to get a job. It was that simple. A real job—one that could interfere with auditions, one that could make me sit in more traffic, one that could make me…work. I was so not happy about that.
Still, I had weeks to enjoy denial and live up the last remnants of my unshackled life. Once settled into my cousin’s apartment, I informed her of several things I wanted to do: visit the Louvre, go for strolls in the park, see the new exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay, climb the Eiffel Tower (I figured I’d try that “exercise” thing), and, naturally, drink wine and eat blocks and blocks of Brie.
“All this is fine,” she said cheerfully. “Oh, did you bring your cards? Can you do a reading for me?”
I shook my head. “No, I left them at—”
Before I’d finished my sentence, she was gone, bounding into her room and then racing back out. The world now had a horrible slow-motion quality to it, like when a glass slips from your hand and the seconds spread out in a way that only happens when something terrible is about to occur, when a horrible shattering mess is inevitable.
I took a deep breath. There before me stood my well-intentioned cousin, and, of course, in her hand was a deck of French tarot cards.
4
The eBay of Psychics
THERE ARE FEW EVENTS IN AN ACTOR’S LIFE MORE traumatizing than the Hunt for a Job. Working nine to five in an office is pretty much out of the question, since an employee suddenly emerging from the bathroom in, let’s say, full disco regalia, can be quite a workplace disturbance…but when that employee then bounds out the door with the promise that she’ll try to maybe return in a few hours, the reception isn’t usually all that welcoming. Disappearing for auditions is frowned upon, to say the least, and without auditions or meetings or some kind of activity that involves acting, you don’t feel so great about calling yourself an actor. To a lesser degree, obviously, at that point you could almost equate yourself to a high school dropout who one day declares he’s a neurosurgeon. To be an actor you must act, and, after a while, perfecting random accents while doing the dishes just doesn’t cut it.
Hence, actors turn to waiting tables or bartending, jobs with flexibility or vampire hours. Unfortunately, in a pressured situation like a loud and crowded bar with desperate and drunken cries for drinks, I knew I’d end up hiding beneath a table, eating maraschino cherries, and pretending that I, too, had no idea where that damn bartender had gone. Waiting tables was also out of the question; long ago I’d discovered I possessed a strange inability to carry a tray. Seriously. The manager who actually really wanted to hire me for the position was shocked and ended up studying the angle of my wrist and the bend in my fingers, in an effort to discover the root of the difficulty…yet to no avail. T
hat damn tray simply wanted nothing to do with my hand.
I anticipated that the Hunt for a Job was going to be traumatic. But then, in an odd stroke of luck, a friend of mine (another actor) got a job at an Internet start-up that was not only hiring but was understanding of actors’ “special needs.” Word spread, and with barely a clue of what the job entailed, several actor friends and I enlisted. Soon we learned the company specialized in something called “buzz marketing,” also enticingly known as “viral marketing,” and that our job was to go undercover to online forums and chat rooms and pose as fans of upcoming movies, to create a “buzz” around the film’s release. If we did our job right, people everywhere would end up at theaters, buying tickets for movies they had no desire to see.
Though I’d started with only a very fundamental understanding of computers, within a matter of time that drastically changed. In addition to the more standard ins and outs of a PC, I also learned how to deviously cover my tracks online and hone the art of creating phony identities and fake e-mail accounts. It was my job to learn the tricks of the trade, and it was a very sneaky trade with very, very wily tricks.
Unfortunately, the most popular forums, and those with the most traffic, were porn sites, and hence that’s where we spent the majority of our time. I can safely say there were some images I wish I’d never seen. Yet the other, almost less appealing option was to spend my days at movie-gossip sites and film-fan forums, gushing about actresses I’d once been in direct competition with, actresses whose careers had taken off while mine remained curiously snagged on the starting gate. But that was my job. It was up to me to learn everything about all the up-and-coming movies I was in no way a part of, to study up on all the actors whose careers were golden and gleaming. Essentially, it was my job to torture myself in long, drawn out twelve-hour shifts.