by Federle, Tim
“Besides, you might learn a thing or two from me,” Asella says, straightening her glasses. “We do both cover E.T.”
“Even if they’ll never put me on.”
“Listen. Let’s not overthink this. I need someone to drill me on my dialogue.” She changes strategies, beginning to kind of shout. “And I’ve got a very elderly dachshund at home.” The security guard stands up. “And my husband would’ve run lines with me if he hadn’t run off with another lady. Is that what you’ve been waiting for me to say, kid?”
Her eyes flick to the guard.
“No!” I yell. “No, I didn’t think old wiener dogs would come up today at all.” This makes me suddenly hungry, again, for a hot dog or three. My caloric kryptonite.
“Great,” Asella says, instantly calm. “Every lunch, then. From now until official understudy rehearsals start. Your job is just to make sure I’m not just making up my own lines.” She suddenly seems grown-up-nervous and not middle-school-nervous.
“I’m just—wow.” I clear my throat. “Why me? You could ask anyone to run lines with you.” Like an adult. Like somebody with experience and a voice that knows its own octave.
Asella lifts her bag. “You wanna do the event with Jordan on TV? And sneak under the radar in my place?”
“I do.” Terribly, I do. Besides the glamour, it’s half a paycheck. Someone I love could use that cash. Maybe even me. (I’ve still gotta pay for my opening night tux.)
“Then I don’t think it’s about how badly I need you,” she says. “I think it’s about how badly you need me.”
She turns and kicks the door to Forty-second Street open.
“Where are you going?” I say against a whooshing wind.
“To a major appointment.”
“Is this our first date?” My voice cracks, again. Which is officially becoming a “thing.”
“Tomorrow. We start tomorrow. Today I’m having a mani-pedi, and I can’t imagine you’d want one of those.”
I look at my hands: fingernails gnawed to the cuticle, knuckles dry as all get-out, palms beat up where I scratched them on Heidi’s fire escape. My hands look like E.T.’s.
“Oh, come on,” Asella says, tugging me by the jacket sleeve. “There’s a two-for-one special at a Korean place off Sixth. We can get a jump start on these scenes while they’re scrubbing our feet.”
“I don’t let people touch my feet,” I’m attempting to relay, but Asella is four entire regular-size people lengths ahead of me, leading me through Times Square.
I’m off to my first mani-pedi.
And into my first grown-up trade.
Koreaaaah Spaaaaaah
(Two weeks and six days till first preview)
First things first. You can’t be shy about your feet when you go to a Korean nail spa.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I say to the very nice woman who’s throwing my shoes into a corner of the store. And now going for a sock.
“Oh, yes she does,” Asella says, putting her Us magazine down and taking a sip of tea. “I’m paying for the whole kaboodle. We’re getting the whole kaboodle.”
“But I’m ticklish.”
“Grow up,” she says, flipping to “Who Wore It Best.”
It’s quite a sight, here: We’ve got our feet in bowls of hot water, and I’m sitting in a padded vinyl chair, but Asella’s legs can’t reach from the seat, so she’s just kind of standing up. It’s actually adorable.
“Well, if we’re here, we should work,” I say, trying not to flinch as this spa lady basically does everything but put a feather to my foot.
“Good,” Asella says, placing the magazine in a rack and pulling out her script. I pop a few ginger candies, confiscated on our way in. “I suppose we should’ve gotten you lunch,” she says, watching me.
“Oh, I’ll be fine.” My tongue is burning off.
“So, should we start with E.T. and Elliott’s first scene?” Asella says. At least I think she does. I’m distracted by this beauty technician lady tearing away at my feet with what appears to be sandpaper. (I always skipped Woodshop class back home, so I might not have my terminology straight.)
“Okay,” I say through a mouth piping with lava-hot ginger. “So the first time E.T. talks—let’s start there. I’ll read Elliott and Gertie.”
“How about that Genna?” Asella says. “Somebody ought to sew her mouth shut and sell her on eBay.”
This would make me laugh if Genna weren’t my only (secret) fan. I gesture to Asella’s script: “So, we’re reading.”
“Where’s your script?” Asella says, examining a wet toe.
I point to my head. “All up here,” I say, plowing into Elliott’s first line: “If there’s something secret I wanted to show you, wouldja promise not to tell Mom?” I switch gears, doing a Genna impersonation: “What kind of a secret?”
“Skipping ahead,” Asella goes. She knows E.T. doesn’t enter for another page.
“I was just setting the mood!”
“Unless you’re buying me dinner and paying for Doc’s irritable bowel meds, don’t bother with mood.”
“Doc?”
“My dog,” Asella says, taking a gulp of her newly refilled tea, her glasses fogging.
“Right. Okay. So, skipping ahead. Page twenty-five, I think? Starting with Elliott.” I close my eyes and channel Jordan. “Do you like ’em, boy?”
Here, I pretend to hand Asella the Reese’s Pieces, using a “Koreaaaah Spaaaaaah” pamphlet as a prop.
“We’re doing blocking?” Asella says, taking the brochure and flicking it into the trash.
“Well, yeah. You might as well put the lines with the staging.”
“Elliott and his alien pet are not getting a mani-pedi onstage, my dear.” She’s got a point, though I’m not sure why she’s being so much trouble. “Besides, you’re intimidating me. I barely know the lines and you’ve got the moves down.”
It’s true. I can watch anything once and get it, unless it involves climbing the rope in gym.
“Whatever,” I say, watching as the nice Korean woman takes my favorite hand (left) and douses it with this superchilly glue stuff. “When you’re not in many scenes, what else is there to do but watch the stars rehearse?”
“Chin up,” Asella says, so I do. “Not literally, Nate. Jesus.”
“Oh, right.”
“Okay. You’ve handed me the Reeses Pieces,” she says. “Onstage. Not here.”
“Do you like ’em, boy?” I say again, back to Elliott’s lines.
“Blip blip schwimmmmmm,” Asella says.
But she doesn’t exactly say it.
She turns her voice into a mechanical airplane bouncing from the walls, ringing out in a high-pitch, otherworldly trill that causes the salon worker to drop my hand and look around, as if the spa’s being robbed by aliens.
“That is amazing,” I say. “How you do that?”
“Is that Elliott’s new line?” Asella hollers, water splashing. “Did they change his line again?” She flips through her script in a panic.
“No. No. The voice thing.”
The Korean lady takes my hand and stares at it wondrously, like perhaps it made the noise, sent from a distant land with an important message.
“I did a lot of cartoons with this voice,” Asella says, hacking up a glob of phlegm. “The trick is to place all the noise in your nose. Pretend you’re going to sneeze and then talk.”
“Cool.” I try it and just end up sneezing. On my manicurist. “Sorry.”
“Keep practicing. Back to the lines?”
“Yes, yes,” I say, taking Asella’s script so she can’t cheat. “Be careful, now. Don’t eat ’em all. Could give you a bellyache you’d never recover from.”
Jordan’s actually pretty good on that line. He plays it like E.T. is about to die or something, but he really pulls it off. I hate him for this.
“Now, is this where I do another blip blip whatever,” Asella says, “or where I go bloop blop.”
>
“It’s Gwim gwom gurrrrr,” I say, staring at my fingers as they’re attacked with clippers. (I sliced into Feather’s quick once, when I was trimming his nails, and he bled for about a week. I’m not sure if humans have the same parts, but I’m basically sitting so still, my hamstring starts to cramp.)
“Right,” Asella says, chewing a lip. “Gwim gwom gurrrrr.”
“I mean . . . honestly?” I say, finally breathing as the lady drops my hand to get Asella another tea. “Can’t you just sort of make up the noises between Elliott’s lines? They’re all nonsense sounds anyway.”
Asella takes my forearm with such startling strength that I yelp. “No, Nate. No.” She hops out of the water bowl, dripping onto my little pile of socks. “We have to respect what the writer writes.”
But wait! “You were giving Dewey a hard time about the word fly, back in the rehearsal room. Right before my voice committed category six suicide.”
Asella drops my arm, takes a swig of new tea, and considers. “Yes, well. I suppose I like to boss Dewey. He’s fun to push around.”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, you know. I woulda had my big comeback if it weren’t for his loyalty to Mackey.” Asella steps back into her bowl. “And somebody’s gotta challenge Dewey’s vision, or we’re going to end up in a live-action video game bomb.”
“I thought his last project sold, like, a billion zillion dollars.”
“Dewey’s last project was for teenage boys. Do you know how many teenage boys go see musicals?”
If they’re anything like me, a billion zillion. “None,” I say. Because they’re not anything like me.
“Anyway,” Asella says, “I need to pick my nail polish, and then we need to head back to the studio.” Asella towels off her feet and pulls out a couple of twenties. From her bra, by the way. “This was a good warm-up for our next session, kid. You’re on it. I’m impressed.”
“Can I contribute anything to this?”
“You already have.” She pays our ladies. “Come here. Do boys wear nail polish these days? According to the news, anything goes.”
“No way,” I say, examining my hands. They look pretty good: puffy and pink, like—yum—Canadian bacon.
“Your stomach’s growling.”
“I’m not sure the ginger candy is going to hold me.”
We skip the polish and take off for rehearsal, with Asella waddling ahead of me on the street. “I’m buying you a Balance Bar or something,” she says, running into a bodega and right back out again, like a magician.
“Did you steal that?” I say, opening my least favorite flavor, but happy all the same.
“No,” she says, taking off again, “they know me there. I used to walk the owner’s pit bull, but there was an incident with my Doc. Free Balance Bars for life, is all I’m saying.”
This lady’s tricky.
We get past the security guard, flashing our badges (every time!) and heading to the elevator, when he stops us. “Wait. You’re Nathan Foster, yeah?”
“Look at you,” Asella says, “a celeb.”
“You’ve got a package here.”
I sidestep to the guard’s desk.
“We’ve got approximately not-even-one minute till rehearsal starts,” Asella says, holding the elevator as the buzzer starts. “Get a move on.”
The security guard tosses me a giant see-through garbage bag—weighed down with a toy.
“Oh my God.”
I reach for my Nokia, dialing Mom’s number at work. And just as I’m about to bawl her out—how could she send Libby’s teddy bear to me? And why on earth did she put it in a pirate’s costume, anyway?—a text buzzes in.
“ur unreal.”
From Libby.
“perfect timing. mom got some good news today AND the teddy bear of all time just arrived. luv you natey.”
“Let’s go, kid,” Asella says.
My feet walk to the elevator, perhaps even taking the rest of me along. I’m not paying any attention. I’m digging open the new package, looking a little closer at the bear. This didn’t come from my mom’s shop. It smells too good, like freshness and affection and not guilt and unpaid taxes. And that’s when I notice the tag: Getting clser to guessing wh I am?
“You asked me if boys wear nail polish,” I say to Asella, who’s suddenly knifing open a mango, right here in the elevator.
“Yup?” she goes.
“They don’t. They get teddy bears from girls who wear too much nail polish.”
“The type of girls who should be sold on eBay?” Asella says, her face contorting into all-out disgust.
“Bull’s-eye,” I say, stuffing the pirate bear into my bookbag, the elevator doors parting for our afternoon rehearsal.
“Hey, Nate?”
“Yeah?” I say, zipping the bookbag shut and leading Asella to the sign-in sheet.
“Don’t tell anyone we’re running lines.” She goes from zero to vulnerable in two seconds—and for the first time seems as small as she really is. “I can’t have the creative team thinking . . . I can’t hack it.”
“Hack what?” Monica says, suddenly next to us by the corkboard.
Asella’s caught off-guard.
“This mango,” I say, grabbing it from her. Its mysterious juice gushes all over my plump new hands. “She can’t hack this mango. You know mangoes.” God, Nate. “And stuff.”
Before Monica can even react, Roscoe shouts, “Actors, we are back from lunch and tapping in one minute!”
And Asella takes my perfect puffy hand and gives it a secret squeeze.
William O’Keefe
(Two weeks till first preview)
Heidi runs out to the twenty-four-hour Duane Reade to pick up “lady things” (I don’t ask), and I’m done with my homework, so I look for Libby online. She’s there in one Skype click.
“My Quixote.”
“My windmill.”
She’s lounging on her bed, painting her nails. Libby never paints her nails. “You never paint your nails. Since when did you start painting your nails?”
“Since my best friend left me for a life of fame-dom.”
Fame-dom! “Ha! Libby, most of my days are spent trying not to get cut from production numbers.”
She caps the polish, grabs a foot, and blows on her toes. Neither of us is flexible, so it’s pretty impressive; she looks like Gumby after a car accident. “Well, whatever. By the time you’re back in Jankburg, I’m going to be painting more than my nails.”
I minimize my own face onscreen. “Oh?”
“Yes. I’m going to be painting the white picket fence on the house I will own—with my first potential ex-husband.”
I give her the WTF eyebrow.
“William O’Keefe,” she says. Really slow.
“William ‘Bill’ O’Keefe?” I say, maximizing the face window to see what I look like when I’m this surprised. Or hurt. “He torments me, Libby.”
“Tormented. Past tense, Natey.”
“He T.P.’d my mom’s minivan, Libby. While I was in it.”
“Not true. James Madison did. Bill just stood guard. And ever since James was expelled for the firecracker incident, the Bills have lightened up considerably.”
James Madison and his Bills of Rights, the most notorious bullies in a school of fish packed to the gills with future criminals, were the worst of the worst. They hated me for loving musicals. They hated me for being friends with girls. They hated my clothes (so did I), my accent (I adopted something vaguely French during seventh grade), they even hated my dog (having once stumbled upon me and Feather acting out a scene from Into the Woods in the forest behind our house).
“I’m just . . . surprised, is all.”
But I’m more than surprised. Bill O’Keefe used to hold my bookbag while James Madison gave me Indian rug burns.
“Here’s the deal,” Libby says, grabbing the teddy bear from Mom’s shop and clutching it like a toddler. My own pirate bear sits at my feet.
I hear Heidi’s front door open, and she races for the bathroom. Perhaps her “lady things” will keep her busy for a while longer.
I continue. “That teddy bear”—besides being superexpensive—“shouldn’t be, like, a bargaining tool here. I mean . . . Bill O’Keefe, Libby? Seriously?”
“Nate, what do you expect? I’m getting older. And Billy was directionless without James.”
“So . . . what?” I say, hearing my voice getting madder. “You swooped in and rescued him? Have you also put him on a diet?”
Bill O’Keefe is the exact shape of the first letter of his last name.
“Watch it, Nate,” Libby says, casting the teddy bear aside. “There’s nothing wrong with Billy having a little more to love. You should know.”
Sting. Also, Libby and I have the same silhouette, so she’s basically just making fun of herself.
“You’re obviously mad at me for something,” I want to dare myself to say. But I hate confrontation. She’s my best friend in the world, ever and forever. Maybe this is just a stage. Maybe she’s just jealous of me.
“There’s a girl in the show who’s into me, actually,” I say. “She’s acting a lot like you’re acting. All swoony over Billy. So maybe she’s serious about it.”
I start playing with a paperweight on Heidi’s desk, fascinated people still have such things.
“You don’t say,” Libby goes.
“I do say. This girl keeps leaving me stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” Libby’s eyebrows knit.
“Drawings. Teddy bears. Candy.”
Genna hasn’t left me candy, yet, but it’s bound to happen. Besides, you always deliver a list in threes. (See: Stooges.)
“So lemme get this . . . straight,” Libby says, standing and blowing a bubble. “Once you send somebody a teddy bear, you’re declaring an act of romance?” She picks up her own gift, holding it by the ear like it’s a smoking pistol.
“Something like that,” I say. “But look. We’re different.”