Stage Fright (Bit Parts)

by Scott, Michelle

  Andrew was in the process of blending a thick, reddish concoction in my juicer. My stomach made another barrel roll. “I am so not drinking that,” I told him. I needed coffee like a junkie needed a fix but knew I couldn’t get any into my angry stomach without throwing up.

  He filled a pair of glasses with the red liquid and set one in front of me. “Look! Breakfast for two.”

  “Ugh. No thanks.”

  “It’s a cure for hangovers. Caleb devised it himself.”

  “Well, in that case, double ugh.” I pushed the glass away.

  Throwing me a peevish look, Andrew took a large swallow from his own glass. He shuddered and his face tightened. For just a second, I was sure he would throw it back up, but he bravely muscled the rest of the crap down.

  He triumphantly held up his empty glass. “Mmm. Delicious. Now, you try it.”

  To make him happy, I took a very tiny sip from my own glass. But the moment the pulpy, strangely bitter, drink touched my tongue, I raced out of the kitchen and into the bathroom.

  After several minutes of violent retching, I returned to the kitchen, pale and chastened. To my relief, the dreadful concoction was nowhere in sight. When I sat down, Andrew brought me a glass of water. “Sorry about that, Cassie.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said. “Getting drunk was my fault after all.”

  “I should have cut you off, but it was so nice to see you finally having fun. It’s been too long.”

  I was certainly paying for my ‘fun’ now. “How big of an ass did I make out of myself?”

  “Not too bad,” he promised. “Laughing a little too loud and too long. A few butt wiggles while singing Call Me Maybe. Nothing disastrous.”

  I groaned and buried my head in my hands.

  “Don’t worry. Everyone else was just as drunk. They won’t remember a thing.”

  “I don’t care about the cast. I just wish Mr. Gorgeous Dreadlocks hadn’t watched it all.” Although it hardly mattered since I’d never be seeing him again.

  Andrew slipped bread into the toaster. “What happened outside the bar, anyway? Darryl seemed pissed at that guy.”

  I struggled to reassemble my fragmented memories. “Darryl passed out in the alley, and then this thing jumped out at me. That guy got rid of it.”

  “What thing?”

  “He said it was a dog, but it had arms.” I frowned. “And hands.” It had also hissed in a terribly familiar way. A sliver of my nightmare popped into my mind, making me shudder.

  Andrew’s forehead puckered. “A dog with arms and hands? Are you sure Darryl wasn’t playing octopus and trying for a back-alley grope?”

  “Ugh! Thanks for putting that image in my head.”

  “And what’s with the black soot on your face? You looked like you were auditioning for Little Orphan Annie. I tried to rub it off last night, but missed a few spots.”

  Frowning, I rubbed my fingers on my forehead. They came away coated with a greasy, black residue. The faintly noxious smell made my stomach tremble. With a stab of shame, I remembered a little more of what had happened. “I barfed all over Darryl’s shoes, didn’t I? Right in front of the gorgeous guy!” I buried my face in my arms. “I could just die!”

  Andrew patted my shoulder as he set a plate of toast on the table. “Don’t worry. He’s seen you at your worst, so it can only get better from here. How about we hang out at the Lamplighter tonight. Who knows? Maybe he’ll show up again.”

  “No way am I going back to a bar. I’m never drinking again. And this time I really mean it.”

  I sipped my water while Andrew searched for peanut butter, jelly, and silverware. Opening a drawer, he grinned. “Hey, check this out!” He put on an oven mitt shaped like a moose. “Good morning, Cassandra!” he said in a goofy, cartoon voice.

  I rolled my eyes. “That was my mother’s.” In fact, nearly everything I owned had belonged to my parents, including the house itself. A few months before, my mom and dad had put the place up for sale and moved to a retirement community in Florida. They were letting me live there rent-free until it sold. Needless to say, I wasn’t in a hurry to get rid of it.

  “Speaking of your mother…” Andrew’s eyes rolled towards the small collection of cookbooks that still remained on the counter. “Any chance she left her moussaka recipe behind?”

  He’d been pestering me about this ever since my mother had cooked a farewell dinner for all our family and friends. Like my sister, my mother was an excellent cook, especially when it came to her family’s Greek recipes and my father’s Arabic ones. After tasting her moussaka, Andrew declared it a piece of heaven, but for all his praise, my mother refused to hand over her secret. She’d offered him my father’s baba ghanoush recipe as a substitute, but Andrew kept angling for the moussaka.

  I put my head in my hands. The very last thing I wanted to think about was baked eggplant. “She’s only given it to one person, and even then she made my sister sign a blood oath of secrecy.”

  “Ah well. One of these days, I’ll get it.”

  Andrew found another hand puppet/oven mitt, this one in the shape of a chicken. He began an impromptu comedy routine in which the chicken played the straight man to the moose. “I told you not to cross the road,” the moose said.

  As he riffed, I grinned. I was going to miss seeing him every day now that the play was over. Although I loved the independence of living on my own, most of the time, I was lonely. I needed a roommate.

  This gave me a flash of inspiration. “Move in with me,” I said.

  Andrew dropped his hands. “Is this like last night’s creepy marriage proposal?”

  I groaned. I’d completely forgotten about that. “No, I swear. This is strictly a roommate thing. We can get your stuff tomorrow when Caleb’s at work.” Caleb was a massage therapist, hence his well-muscled arms.

  “Cassie, I appreciate the offer, but I’ve already got a place to live.” Andrew took off the oven mitts.

  It was time for intervention. I cleared my throat, ready to deliver the speech I’d been preparing for the past several months, but Andrew spoke up first. “I know you don’t like Caleb, but he’s a good guy. He takes care of me. We’ve been together for six years, and he totally supports my acting career.”

  Caleb’s support was more like someone waiting to cash in on a risky business venture. If Andrew ever made it big, Caleb would be as supportive as Ike Turner or Bobby Brown.

  Andrew wrung the moose oven mitt tighter and tighter. “Caleb believes in me.” His expression clouded. “You know about my family, right?”

  I nodded. When Andrew had come out in high school, his parents had given him three months to ‘stop embracing that sinful lifestyle’ before throwing his things on the lawn and changing the locks on their doors. Andrew hadn’t spoken to them since.

  “Caleb is the only person who ever loved me,” Andrew said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said. “I love you.”

  My admission fell with a nearly audible clunk. Andrew’s face reddened in embarrassment.

  I charged ahead, determined to speak my piece. “I love you, and I don’t like the way Caleb treats you.”

  His jaw tightened. “That’s not for you to like or dislike. It’s my business.”

  “Caleb hardly lets you out of his sight,” I argued. A flush crept up Andrew’s neck, but I didn’t care. “He won’t let you have your own car! Hell, he won’t even let you buy comic books!”

  Andrew’s eyes blazed. “He let me go to the bar after the performance last night.”

  I exploded. “You’re a grown man! You shouldn’t have to ask for permission to go out with your friends.”

  “It’s called ‘putting the other person first’, Cassie,” Andrew said hotly. “We make sacrifices for each other all the time. Maybe if you were in a relationship, you’d understand.”

  I knew right away that he regretted those words, but it didn’t stop the pain. I hadn’t had a steady boyfriend since my sophomore year in colle
ge, and that had ended badly.

  Without a word, I got up and went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. Andrew tried to apologize, but I turned on the water so I wouldn’t have to listen. When I finished showering, I went straight into the adjoining bedroom, drew the covers over my head, and fell asleep.

  I awoke to the smell of warm cookies.

  Andrew was gone, but he’d left a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the kitchen counter along with a note that said, “I’m sorry.” Taking a cookie, I realized that not only had Andrew baked for me, he’d also done the dishes, swept the floor, and cleaned out my fridge.

  I was about to call the poor, guilt-ridden boy and tell him I wasn’t mad anymore when someone knocked on the front door. Passing through the living room, I saw that Andrew had cleaned up in there as well. He’d straightened up, dusted, and even vacuumed. I definitely needed to make that guy my roommate.

  Through the spy hole in the front door, I saw a thin, balding man wearing a gold blazer: Toby McIntyre, my parents’ real estate agent. With an audible groan, I cracked open the door.

  Toby’s smile was more like the baring of fangs. He and I were enemy soldiers each fighting over the same piece of ground. Toby was determined to sell my parents’ house while I was equally determined to hang onto it.

  “Hello, Cassandra. I’m here for a showing.” I tried to protest that I wasn’t feeling well, but he was already halfway inside, calling out an invitation to a woman standing on the porch.

  “Glad to see that you finally cleaned up this dump,” he muttered. I’d been purposely leaving the house unkempt in order to turn off potential buyers, something that infuriated the realtor. In fact, he’d been threatening to call my mother and rat me out if I didn’t do something. Thanks to Andrew’s housekeeping, however, the house looked better than it had in weeks.

  Toby inhaled deeply, his hairy nostrils flaring. “Smells like you’ve been baking as well.” He smiled smugly. “Nice touch.”

  Andrew’s cookies. Shit. No one could resist the aroma of warm chocolate. I had a terrible feeling that I was about to have a problem on my hands.

  “Now, if you would get rid of those damned arts and crafts projects, we’d be in business.” Toby jabbed his finger at the dozens of Maggie’s tissue paper mobiles hanging in the front window.

  I was about to tell him to mind his own business when the potential buyer bustled into the house. She was maybe two dozen years older than me and had a head of ketchup-colored curls. She wore a long, wool coat topped with a brilliantly-pattered scarf, and her round cheeks were rosy from the cold. When she saw me grab my coat and reach for my car keys, she said, “You don’t have to leave. It doesn’t bother me if you stay.”

  Relieved, I sank down on the couch.

  The woman gently touched one of Maggie’s many macaroni/clay/popsicle stick sculptures crowding the fireplace mantle. “I sense that an artist lives here.”

  “An actress, actually,” I said.

  She clapped her hands. “That’s marvelous! Where have you worked?”

  “Until last night, the Bleak Street Theatre.”

  “The Bleak Street.” The agent snorted. “No one in their right mind would go to that broken-down dive.”

  I glared at him.

  He held up his hands. “No offense, but that dinosaur is sitting on a chunk of prime real estate. The owner could make a mint off of it, but from what I hear, she won’t even consider selling.” He frowned, as if this was a personal insult to real estate investors everywhere.

  “She probably doesn’t want it torn down,” I said. “It’s a beautiful theater.”

  “It’s a relic,” he countered. “It’s probably costing her a small fortune in upkeep.”

  “Well, I think it’s marvelous.”

  Toby rolled his eyes.

  When the potential buyer disappeared into the kitchen, Toby whispered to me, “Just so you know, your parents told me if I didn’t get an offer this week, I could lower the price. Like it or not, this house is being sold.” He glanced at himself in the mirror above the fireplace, straightening his gold jacket and striking a pose as if modeling for a picture. “I wasn’t awarded Top Selling Real Estate Agent for the past four years in a row because I couldn’t close a deal. If I were you, I’d start looking for a new apartment.”

  I glared, hating him. To Toby, my parents’ house was just another property to be moved as quickly as possible, but to me it was home. Not only that, I didn’t have the money to find another place. My paychecks barely covered utilities and groceries. Even scraping up cash to fix my car’s heater was going to be a challenge. Coming up with monthly rent was out of the question.

  Enjoying my distress, Toby smiled. “Acting doesn’t pay so well, does it?”

  “Shut up,” I muttered.

  The potential buyer called out from the kitchen, “Yoo hoo! I have a question!”

  Toby hurried to help her, and I hauled myself off the couch to follow. The buyer pointed to the stove. “Do the appliances come with the house?”

  “Everything except the washer and dryer,” Toby promptly answered.

  She nodded absently, her eyes roving over the crayoned pictures on the fridge. “Did you make these?” she asked me.

  Yeah. Because I draw like a four-year-old. Okay, actually I do draw like one, but still. “No, my niece did those.”

  “We can take them down to give you a better idea of the room if you like.” Toby yanked several pictures from the fridge.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the woman said. “I love the positive energy they bring into this home.” She touched the bottom of a mobile, making it shiver. “Of course, this energy is completely incompatible with my qi. I’m more of a harmonics person. I practice the six healing sounds several times a day. And I have a gong in every room. It’s all part of my bagua, you know.”

  Five months ago, I would have called this woman a fruitcake and dismissed everything she said. But truthfully, I used Maggie’s art as a charm to ward off the bad voodoo in my life. For the most part, it worked. Looking at the pictures reminded me of the ever-cheerful, bright-eyed little girl. If I had half that child’s optimism and confidence, I would have auditioned for the part of Lucy Seward without a second thought.

  “It’s nice to meet someone who believes in the power of healing energies.” The potential buyer turned on the taps and squatted down to look in the cupboard under the sink. “Not everyone does.”

  I threw a triumphant smile at Toby who stood silent and thin-lipped in a corner of the room.

  The woman’s red curls bobbed as she thoughtfully nodded her head. “Maybe it’s because most people haven’t found the proper energy channel to suit them. They try to channel harmonics when they should be using aroma. Or they’re into aroma when chakra would be better.”

  Toby discretely cleared his throat to interrupt her. “Well? What do you think of the house?”

  The woman consulted the fact sheet. “The furnace is over twenty years old, the roof needs to be replaced, and there’s no central air. Still, it has possibilities. I’ll add it to my list of ‘maybes’.”

  I swallowed back my disappointment. After all, ‘maybe’ did not mean ‘yes.’ Then again, seeing the way Toby’s eyes gleamed, I knew he’d be using every trick in his bag to convince her to buy. As he ushered her out of the house, he flashed me a triumphant smile, as if he’d already closed the deal.

  Before I could dwell on my bad luck, my cell phone rang. It was Andrew.

  “Do you hate me?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” I said. “Thanks for the cookies and for cleaning my house. I want to hire you on as domestic help.”

  “Ah, shucks, your offer came too late. I got called to do a shoot next week.”

  Most of Andrew’s paying jobs came from modeling, yet the boy still didn’t realize how beautiful he was. I never would have thought such a person existed until I’d become friends with one. “Awesome! I’m sure people will buy a million of whate
ver you’re selling.”

  He gave an uncertain laugh. “It’s only a group shoot, though. Caleb says I’m getting passed over for the solo stuff because my body’s not up to par.”

  I rolled my eyes, and mentally told Caleb to shut the hell up. “Your body is perfect,” I assured him. I squashed my phone between my ear and my shoulder as I raided the fridge.

  “Want to come over later?” he asked. “I’m still thinking about auditioning for 16 Voices, and I need to practice. I could use a partner.”

  “Will Caleb be around?” No way would I visit Andrew if his poisonous boyfriend was lurking somewhere in their condo.

  “His family is celebrating his mother’s birthday tonight, so I’m solo.” There was a hint of sadness in Andrew’s voice. Not because Caleb was gone, but because Caleb’s family didn’t want Andrew around. They, too, hated the fact that their son was gay. In fact, Andrew and Caleb had met at a support group for members of the LGBT community whose families refused to accept them. Unfortunately, this was a really, really large group.

  “I’m waitressing for my sister in an hour,” I said. As much as I wanted to hang out with Andrew, I was desperate for money, especially if I was going to be kicked out of the house and into an apartment.

  “How about afterwards?” he asked.

  After work, I planned to collapse on my couch with a quart of ice cream and a pile of DVDs. I was about to turn him down when he said the magic words: “I’m cooking.”

  “Count me in,” I said and shut the refrigerator door. If anything could draw me out of the house on a cold night, it was Andrew’s cooking. I definitely needed to make that man my roommate.

  Chapter Four

  Although my sister Elena had graduated with a degree in art history, she’d left the art world to start her own catering business. Since her home kitchen wasn’t certified for commercial use, she’d been forced to rent space elsewhere. After scouring the city for the perfect location, she’d finally settled on an old, stone church that hadn’t held a worship service in years. It wasn’t the beautiful building that had convinced her to lease the place, however. Elena, ever practical, had been attracted to the spacious, basement kitchen with its industrial-sized appliances, the reasonable rent, and ten-minute drive from her home. I, on the other hand, loved the old building’s twin spires, slate roof, and stained-glass windows. It looked like the perfect setting for a gothic mystery.