Chapter 2
Allie
I’m not sure why I’m here again, sitting on the black leather chair in this stuffy, cramped waiting room. The guy sitting at the back of the room looks like the receptionist, but he isn’t.
His name is Brock, a douchey name for a douchey guy. He’s the youngest talent agent in this three-person outfit and the one who didn’t get a private office with a door. Everyone who walks in and treats him as if he might be helpful in connecting them with another agent in the office is rudely and pointedly ignored.
Or, if he’s in a playful mood, he looks you up and down and says something like: “My clients are all animals, but I might make an exception for you and your horse’s face” or “you and your bullfrog’s mouth” or “sloth’s hands” or “hippo’s grace” or “cow’s titties” or whatever animal part comes to his mind in the moment.
The poor person who makes the mistake of thinking he’s a decent human being, mostly innocent teenage girls, blink stupidly at him, and then sink into the other chair in the room to wait for their actual agent to stick their head from behind the door and call their names.
The smart ones, however, turn and take off, speeding out the door.
You better run, I always think, but Brock never acknowledge their reactions and goes back to barking into the mouth piece on his headset.
In all my years, sitting in this chair in front of his desk, I’ve never seen him meet with a client himself or close a deal. He must do something, though, because I’ve noticed his clothes have stopped hanging off his body. He looks like a man who eats good food regularly and he carries himself like a man who has a trainer, a masseuse, and a tailor.
I know all this about Brock because I sit here forgotten for hours by my agent, Cheri. I know all this because years ago I was the green and hopeful kid, still sporting my cheerleader-perfect ponytail.
The first morning I walked into this place, I was going to meet with my agent—my agent!—for the first time. I’d tied a red ribbon in my hair that morning, but before I opened the door of my car to walk into the building, I changed my mind. I pulled off the ribbon and slipped it into my black Longchamp bag, a present from my aunt on my nineteenth birthday.
That was years ago—how many? Seven? Ten? Who knows. That was the last promising day of my career. Since then I’ve wasted days of my life on this black plastic chair watching people walk past me with big confident smiles and leave with watery eyes.
Those of us who are veterans of this life will nod at each other. I’ve watched so many of them change from having that snappy walk of an eager dreamer to the more measured clipped movement of the determined, to the resigned forward motion of the person trapped in a tortured loop.
There’s nothing glamorous about this life.
Today, for example, I’ve been waiting for an hour and forty minutes to see a woman who won’t look me in the eye for the whole of our 15-minute meeting. She won’t waste her words on me or help me when I tell her that I haven’t worked as an actor in months. I’ll tell her that I’m starting to lose my will to go on.
I’ll tell her in no uncertain terms, that I wish I was with an agent who took time to work with me or send me to auditions for interesting roles, and she’ll nod along, all the while shifting piles of papers from the left side of her desk to the right. A headset will hang around her neck and she’ll smell like Chanel and stale cigarettes, and I’ll leave without a job and get into my car and drive to Eastern High School where I’ll put in a few hours as the assistant cheer coach.
I shift in my chair and the plastic sticks to the back of my legs. I’ve been here too long, I think. I’m hungry and will be late for practice, so I grab the handle of the old Longchamp bag and get up just as Cheri sticks her head out the door and says, “Allie?”
I lift my hand in greeting, but it feels like sign of defeat. She opens the door a little wider, enough for me to slip around the door into the room filled to bursting with boxes and papers. She gestures at the chair.
“It’s good to see you,” she says to me, but doesn’t look up from her computer screen.
“You too,” I say flatly.
“How’s it going?”
“Well, I wanted to ask you,” I say, bending forward with my elbows on my knees trying to get her attention, while glancing at the computer screen.
“Uh-huh,” she says. “Go on.”
“I haven’t been out for a real audition for a while. It’s been more than two months. The last one was for the commercial for the body spray, remember? Remember, I was allergic to the spray and broke out into hives? Ruined my chances to go out for anything for weeks, but I’m better now.”
I pitch my voice lighter and say lamely, “Look at me; hive-free!”
Cheri doesn;t look at me. She speaks a “ha” sound, because it was a lame joke but she can’t be bothered to pretend to laugh.
“Anyway,” I push on. “Is there anything else? Anything at all? I need to work—things are a little tight right now.”
The noise of keyboard keys being tapped grates on my already frayed nerves.
“I’m just checking something,” she says to me. “There was something I saw and thought of you right away. Ah, yes, here it is.”
She turns her chair and, finally, glances my way. I sit up straighter.
“Have you heard of Hard Pressed?”
“The cat-list people?” I say, confused.
“Yep,” she says, “same folks. The company is owned by that guy Xavier Baldwin. Super rich and slightly brilliant when it comes to the Internet. For the past couple years, they’ve been in the process of expanding their media brand from cat-lists and clickbait to quizzes and news, and now they’re doing video content. A lot of video content, actually.”
I nod, but I’m not sure what I’m nodding for.
“They’re going to start doing things like humor shorts and entertainment news clips, but they’re also looking for someone to be the face of their new food show. They say it has the potential of being a regular gig, which would be great for you. Tons of exposure and a hot brand behind you, the whole bit.”
“That sounds great,” I say, trying not to get excited. I’ve seen too much disappointment. “I don’t know a ton about food, but I’m a TopChef super-fan.”
“Uh-huh,” Cheri says. Now she’s the one nodding.
“Great,” she says, “that’s super. Maybe draw on that enthusiasm when you meet with them, if you meet with them. But from what they tell me, this gig is going to be less about ‘preparing food’ or ‘cooking’ per se and more about eating stuff. Remember this whole thing is about getting Millennials to click on the videos and share them across their TwitterBooks or SnapGrams or whatever the fuck they care about this week.”
“Okay—”
“And if you can get in front of this market and if they like you, you could become a sensation. You know, like the kid that went to the dentist and came back high? Remember that? He kept asking about real life or something?”
“Sure—but he was a child and became an actual meme,” I point out. “Are you saying I’m auditioning at Hard Pressed to be a meme? Can companies engineer memes even?”
“First of all, you’re not auditioning. I told them you’d take it. But they are taking you on as a trial run. If you do well, there’s the potential for a regular gig or maybe another viral content nonsense thing.”
“Cheri, I don’t know—”
“What’s the problem exactly? Is it the paycheck or the possibility of a regular paycheck?” Cheri pushes herself to face the screen again and begins typing.
“I was hoping I would get a chance to go out for a role. You know, to act again?”
“This is acting, kiddo,” she says. She faces me and looks me in the eyes for the first time all morning. “The segment is about eating and talking about gross-out foods—worms and crickets and Soylent, monkey brains and lizard eyes. Shit like that. You’ll eat them after being adorably horrified or whatever the director wants.”
“Cheri—” I feel panic starting.
“Sorry, Allie, I have another client coming in. The shoot starts today.”
I hear the ping of an email from the phone tucked in my bag.
“I just forwarded the information.”
I get up and mumble thank you. I make my way out of the building into the parking lot wondering what I did to deserve this life.