Huh. Backstage wasn’t something we carried at the bodega. I had an online membership where I could search all the latest audition notices, but I’d let it lapse. My plan had been to spend the summer auditioning for stuff, now that I was finally done with high school and could really devote myself to making it on Broadway, but summer had turned out to be kind of a dead season. At first, I’d tried to look for a show that would make me eligible for Equity, the actors’ union, so I could actually work on Broadway, but there wasn’t anything. Turned out, there wasn’t even any non-Equity work, either. All those actors were out of the city, doing regional summer stock, and even if I miraculously could have gotten an audition for a Broadway show that didn’t require an Equity card (which I didn’t have), or an agent (which I also didn’t have), or an appointment (almost impossible to get without the first two things), nothing was casting. It had been so easy to settle into a routine of silent meals, dance classes, shifts at the bodega, and hiding in my room, losing myself in endless marathons of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
I’d love to see what those queens could do with some giant baby bows.
But now that it was fall, something must have been casting, since one of the audition notices in Backstage was circled in black Sharpie. Obviously, Ma had left it here for me to find. I’d prefer it if she talked to me instead of communicating through casting calls hidden inside People magazine, but if I’d learned anything over the last couple of years, it was that the Lopezes weren’t as good at talking as they thought they were.
At first glance, I thought the casting call might have been a joke. Ethan Fox was directing a revival of Hello, Dolly! Ethan Fox? That didn’t make any sense. Ethan Fox was a darling of the daring off-Broadway scene. His last show had been a new work in an abandoned button factory on the Lower East Side in which all the actors wore raw meat that literally decayed on their bodies over the run of the show. Only a genius like Ethan Fox could bring back the meat dress from its 2010-Gaga-at-the-VMAs heyday and make it revelatory instead of played out. Ben Brantley at the New York Times had said something funny about the show that I couldn’t quite remember, about how if you could stand the smell, it was stunning. Ethan Fox wouldn’t touch a musical with a ten-foot pole. And certainly not one as old-school as Hello, Dolly!
And yet … there it was, in black-and-white in Backstage: Ethan Fox was holding open call auditions for a Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! I gripped the magazine tighter, my pulse speeding up against my will.
Open call?
An open call, where anyone could show up and be seen, was a huge opportunity for a non-Equity Broadway hopeful like me. And an unusual one. I couldn’t remember there being an open call for a Broadway show since the Hair revival in ’09. I’d been way too young to audition then—especially for a show that required full-frontal nudity—but Ma and I had watched a story about it on the news. Willie Geist had interviewed actors standing in a line that wound around the block, all of them waiting for their chance to be seen.
Could this be my chance?
I scanned the rest of the casting notice, hoping there might be a principal role I’d be a good fit for. Obviously, even being in the chorus would be amazing—I’d be fast-tracked into Equity, plus I’d be a real working actor, on Broadway—but a speaking role would be even more amazing.
There. Down at the bottom of the casting notice. They were looking for a strong dancer, male, any ethnicity, ages 18 to 21, to play Barnaby Tucker.
It only takes a moment.
That was the love song in Hello, Dolly! I hummed a couple of bars. In musicals, it only took a moment to fall in love, which was kind of ridiculous, but it was possible for everything to change in a moment in real life, too.
This could be my moment.
I ripped the page out of Backstage and folded it neatly into quarters, then stuck it in the pocket of my sweatpants.
I had no idea what an Ethan Fox production of Hello, Dolly! could possibly look like.
But I knew I was going to find out.
“BRITISH INVASION!”
by Amelie Stafford for CelebutanteTalk,
a subsidiary of Cabot Media
Hold on to your knickers, fellow Yanks, because things are about to get SPICY in the city that never sleeps! That’s right, Pepper Smith herself is reportedly heading back to New York City, allegedly leaving one heartbroken royal rascal behind her in England.
Love her or hate her, we know you know her, but in case you’ve spent the last couple years on Mars, let’s recap: Daddy Smith is based in Hong Kong, where he does something too complicated and too lucrative for us mere mortals to understand, but the multilingual baby Pepper grew up all over the world, eventually acquiring that swoony accent while being educated at the finest schools in London.
Those buttoned-up Brits couldn’t get enough of the plucky Pepper. Whether she was putting the love in “forty-love” with a certain gorgeous tennis champ at Wimbledon, exhibiting her original work at the Tate Modern to astounding critical acclaim, or wearing nothing but a truly giant hat to Ladies’ Day at Ascot, it was smashing success after smashing success across the pond. Even one well-known, particularly shiny-haired duchess was overheard remarking that she was “obsessed” with everything Pepper! And, TBH, who wouldn’t be?
With rumors swirling about a certain royal affair (rumors we wouldn’t dare repeat—unlike those nasty British tabloids, we here at CelebutanteTalk understand a little something called journalistic integrity!), Pepper is stateside for the foreseeable future, and we lucky New Yorkers couldn’t be happier! Pepper has been keeping uncharacteristically mum about her next steps (perhaps the influence of those stiff-upper-lipped Brits?), but knowing the inimitable Miss Smith, she’s sure to have something unbelievable up her (couture) sleeve!
I WAS BARELY OUT OF high school, and I’d already made it on Broadway.
Well, fine, it was Broadway Street in Michigan, but the Detroit Opera House was nothing to sneeze at. I stood in the wings, peeking out at the rows of red velvet seats slowly filling with patrons, the ornate golden balconies, and the gorgeous domed ceiling.
“It’s one of my favorite venues in the country.” Dad appeared behind me, looking out over my shoulder. “I always make sure every tour I do books a show in Detroit.”
Since I left Riverdale to go on the road with Dad, we’d been getting along pretty well—no, really well, actually. Maybe the best we’d ever gotten along.
“Remember this moment,” Dad continued, squeezing my shoulder. “Really remember it. How it feels, how it looks, how it smells, everything. Three thousand seats, full of people who are here to see you.”
“They’re here to see you, Dad.” I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes a little. My name wasn’t even on the ticket.
“Sure, maybe that’s why they came. But they’ll leave remembering your name.”
I glowed with pride. When he wasn’t on my case about messing with the tempo—I swear, that man had an inner metronome you could set your watch by—Dad had been surprisingly complimentary about my singing. After years of desperately seeking his approval and constantly falling short, it was a nice change of pace.
“I’ll certainly give them something to remember.” I hummed softly, vocalizing the descant in our opening number. Impostor syndrome has never been one of my issues, and I knew I’d never sounded better. This was what I was meant to do: sing, professionally, night after night.
And I loved every minute of it.
“Remember this, Josie,” Dad said again, giving my shoulder one final squeeze. “Because it won’t always be like this. You’ll need to remember all the glamour and gold when we’re singing in the back of a TGI Thursday’s on National Baby Back Rib Day.”
“Very funny, Dad.”
“And watch the tempo on the bridge in the first number!” He walked farther backstage to talk to one of the sound guys.
“Dad. Um, Dad?” Forget the tempo on the bridge. He couldn’t be serious … right? “Are we really playing a T
GI Thursday’s?”
“Five minutes until places.” A stage manager crossed by, adjusting her headset and glancing at a clipboard. It was strange to be in a different place with a different crew every night. True, the “crew” at La Bonne Nuit had mostly just been Reggie with a spotlight, but there was something so weird about doing the same show night after night, where the set list was mostly the same, but everything around us changed.
I rolled my shoulders back, hearing them crack. The Comfort Motel we’d stayed in last night hadn’t exactly lived up to its name, with its hard-as-a-rock mattress and flat pillows, and my body was feeling it tonight. Luckily, the choreography in Dad’s show was mostly of the sing-and-sway variety, not quite like the moves I used to bust out with the Pussycats.
The Pussycats. Thinking about them always gave me a little pause. I was pretty sure I was meant to be a solo artist, but back when things were good, making music with Val and Melody had been some of the best times of my life.
Problem was, those good times had kept getting fewer and farther between. Our end had been inevitable.
So why did I find myself missing them at the oddest of times? I should have been focusing on the show we were about to do, for three thousand people, not miles away and years ago, in a dingy music room in a high school with an underfunded arts department.
We had a different opening act in every city we played, one that had been coordinated either by the venue, or more often by Pauly, Dad’s tour manager. I watched from backstage as our Detroit opener walked out, a cute Black guy a couple years older than me in a slim velvet suit. He took a seat at the piano, angling the microphone toward his face. Total young John Legend vibes.
“Ooh, another jazz pianist.” Dad was back at my shoulder as our opening act played a few chords, his fingers stretching gracefully across the keys. “Shoulda told the venue not to book my competition.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. There’s nobody quite like Myles McCoy.”
I knew Dad certainly thought so. But he had the talent to back up his arrogance, and in show business, that was all that mattered. This other guy was good, though. His voice had a warm, rich quality that made me think of a pat of butter melting on a stack of the Chock’lit Shoppe’s finest chocolate chip pancakes. I’d had pancakes in diners on the road, but so far, nobody could make a pancake quite like Pop Tate.
“I think I might go out tonight,” I said suddenly, wondering what else Detroit might have to offer. If our opener was this good, who knew what other talent was out there. Actually, I should probably ask this guy where to go. Someone who pulled off a velvet suit that well must have some kind of idea of what was happening around town. I had a hard time imagining he was heading home to sit on the couch and watch the Matchelorette while eating cheese puffs after the show.
“Out?” Dad pushed up the brim of his signature fedora, scratching at his forehead.
“Yeah, Dad, out. See something besides a Comfort Motel vending machine. We’re in Motor City! The birthplace of Motown. Think of all the incredible voices who started here. The Supremes, the Marvelettes, Mary Wells—”
“Yes, Josie, I’m familiar. No need to read the Motown Museum brochure to me.”
“I don’t want to go to the museum. I mean, I do, maybe tomorrow,” I amended. “But tonight I’d like to hear some live music. See who might be the next Mary Wells.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Dad shook his head slowly, and my heart sank. True, I was eighteen—technically an adult—but this was his show and his rules. I’d learned quickly that out on the road, it was Myles McCoy’s world, and everyone else was just living in it. “Wandering around in a city you don’t know late at night? That sounds like you’re just asking for trouble.”
“Dad. I grew up in Riverdale.” I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes. “Suburbia’s murder capital. The cutest lil haven of serial killers, organ-snatching cults, and drug-dealing gangs you ever did see. The place where trouble finds you, whether or not you’re asking for it.” Dad grunted in response. “You were with me when Pop’s got shot up. You’ve seen it for yourself! I think I can handle Detroit.”
“Be that as it may …” The opener finished and stood up, executing a neat bow as the audience applauded appreciatively. Man, the noise of three thousand people clapping sounded good. “Even if you don’t run into any hoodlums wearing gremlin masks—”
“Gargoyles,” I interrupted him. “And I think that was just a Riverdale thing. Plus, it was two years ago.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Dad concluded. “Now that you’re a professional, you have to act like one. Taking care of yourself is your number one priority, and sometimes that means missing out on the fun stuff. Go to sleep early. Save your voice. Rest. So you can be the next Mary Wells.”
“Can we maybe go to the Motown Museum tomorrow morning, at least?” I asked as the emcee came back out onstage to introduce Dad.
“No time.” Dad rolled his shoulders back, his charming stage persona smile already in place. “We’ve gotta hit the road early to get to Toledo in time to prep for tomorrow’s gig. The crew there is notoriously finicky about sound check.”
“And here he is, the man you’ve been waiting for … Mister Myles McCoy!”
The emcee flung his arm toward the wing we were waiting in, and Dad walked out, his smile wide, waving at the crowd who greeted him with a roar. I’ll say this for the jazz fans in Detroit: They weren’t quiet.
Dad sat down at the piano, flipping the back of his jacket neatly behind him on the bench. A couple people in the crowd whooped as he played a few chords, then a couple arpeggios. I could practically feel the contented sigh in the theater as the notes resolved themselves into the opening of Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood.” Dad frequently started the show alone at the piano, playing this song. It was one of his favorites.
Listening to him play, I had a rare memory of him and my mom at home together, happy, when I was really little. I remembered Dad playing this song, Mom resting a hand on his shoulder, until she pulled him up off the piano so they could dance, Dad humming the melody in his rich baritone as they swayed back and forth.
I wondered how Mom was doing. At first it had been kind of nice to get a break from Sierra McCoy and her never-ending expectations of excellence, but I missed her, too. At least I could be sure that Mr. Keller was taking good care of her. And she’d probably enjoyed bossing Kevin around, before he left for college.
Kevin … he’d been so busy with school, and I’d been so busy with touring, we’d barely talked. I had no idea what he was up to. I made a mental note to text my favorite stepbrother after the show. I hadn’t really talked to anyone from Riverdale since I left on tour. My world had gotten so much bigger—in the sense that I was in a different city every night, and they were all new to me—but in some ways, it had also gotten so much smaller. It had shrunk to the stage and the motels and the van that took us between the two, and sometimes, it was hard to remember that the world back home kept right on spinning without me.
The audience erupted into applause. Once it died down, Dad launched into some of his onstage patter. For someone who could be so rigid and demanding, I was always surprised by how relaxed and easygoing he seemed onstage, like he was just having a casual chat with three thousand of his closest friends. But then again, he’d always been at his best behind a microphone.
I knew how that felt.
“Sometimes,” Dad said, “a special song needs a special voice.”
That was my cue. I walked out to the microphone stage left of Dad, the height adjusted perfectly by a stagehand. I wrapped my hands around the microphone and felt a faint hum of electricity, of possibility, of that perfect moment right before I started singing when anything could happen. I could feel the whole audience waiting with me, expectantly, and I knew I wouldn’t let them down.
There was a lot of stuff in my life I wasn’t sure about. But this? Me and the microphone? This, I got.
“Here she is, ladies and gentlemen—my daughter, Miss Josie McCoy!”
Before we left, I hadn’t been sure if Dad was going to tell people I was his daughter. I’d been surprised that he ended up making such a big deal out of it in the show. The cynical part of me wondered if it was because it played well with the middle-aged women who comprised the majority of his audience—they all thought it was too cute for words, as they loved to tell me and Dad when they hung around the stage door after our shows, asking Dad for selfies and autographs on their programs—but I hoped it was at least partly because he was proud of me and my talent, too.
Well, if he wasn’t proud, exactly, he was at least giving me fewer notes than when we started the tour, and that was something, too.
Dad stopped with the chatter, and looked over at me, his eyebrows raised slightly. I nodded. I was ready.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and sang, Gershwin’s words and the notes flowing out of me like magic. After singing the first verse of “Someone to Watch Over Me” a cappella, Dad joined in, the piano instrumentation lush and full. I couldn’t see the audience as they sat in the dark, but I could feel them, transported along by the music just like I was. I sang like I’d heard Ella sing it on my dad’s old records, but I sang it like me, too.
I didn’t need someone to watch over me. Life in Riverdale had taken care of that. No, I was perfectly fine on my own, no shepherd needed.
All I needed was music.
“VERONICA?” I ASKED, ANSWERING THE PHONE.
“Katy!” Something whirred in the background of the call; something I couldn’t quite place. Knowing Veronica, it was equally likely to be a Gulfstream jet or a blender. “How is the most gorgeous girl in Manhattan?”
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