Better Nate Than Ever (14 page)

I take a deep breath in the hall, and then, glancing down again at the sides, blurry on account of my rapid-fire hand shuddering, make out the older brother’s last line of the script page. I shout through a crack in the door (in a stupid southern drawl—
who
knows why):
“The bathroom’s the other way, turtle-brains. That’s out back to the yard!”

Three more quick breaths, and then a slow one, and I turn to see two pole-dance girls waiting for their class to start in the studio next door.

“That’s some real s__t, baby,” one of them says. “Whatever you all are doing in there, that’s some real s__t.” I think this is a compliment, actually, though anybody saying the S-word back home is usually using it as an example of what I’ve got for brains.

“Are
you
reading for the role of Michael?” a boy asks, and I turn to see Jordan Rylance sitting outside the door.

“No, I”—my voice is hoarse, battered at the edges, and my hand not holding the sides is still glued to the doorknob. “I just read all the parts to side number one. Because they gave me all the lines.”

On cue, the hallway around me bursts into laughter. The mean kind. The you’ve-got-toilet-paper-on-your-shoe kind. And I turn to the pole dancer, she of
three teeth and a tattoo of an alligator on her elbow, and she says, “You don’t worry about them, baby.”

But if
she’s
in my corner, that’s the opposite of a good thing.

I look back at the door and turn the knob, but it won’t budge. I’m locked out. My bookbag is inside, and my donuts and pride and dreams, too.

At once it swings back, knocking me over almost, and Rex Rollins looks me in the eye and is full of some kind of unreadable expression. Like he’s just been crying or throwing up.

“Nate,” he says, quiet, “could you calmly walk back into the room?”

“Nate!” Calvin the assistant director says, standing to greet me. “Come on back. That was really something.”

Everyone else is still sitting at the table, eyeing me like I might open fire.

I walk back to the
x
. “Would you mind, ladies and sirs”—shut up, Nate,—“giving me one more shot at side number one? Because I swear I won’t slip into a stupid southern accent on the Michael lines again.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Garret Charles says. I thought he was just the dance guy, but he sure has a lot to say about acting. I guess all British people are experts on acting and accents and scene-work and dramatic structure, or something.

“Nate, how tall are you?” Rex Rollins says.

“On your knees,” Garret says. “How tall are you when gliding across the floors on your knees, and are we ready to show that particular trick?”

But by the time he has said the words “are we ready,” I’m circling their table, channeling my
Fiddler on the Roof
bottle dancing, flying by like we’re at a racetrack, the team’s little greyhound.

Greyhound.

Buses.

Mom is going to kill me for all of this.

“Good God,” Monica says, by now having leapt upon Sammy’s piano lid. “Could I tie a towel to your knees and would you come over and mop my apartment?” Since she’s the only girl, this gets a big laugh from the team, so I yuk-yuk right alongside them and possibly even slap my knee.

I leap up, back to the
x
, and say, “I was able to do that, two shows a day, for a whole weekend of performances in my friend’s basement back home.” But, actually, I’m gasping between each word, so it’s breathier than that.

“Nate, are you visiting town for the first time?” Calvin says. I wonder what he’s getting at.

“Well, I mean, technically yes, but I feel like a native already. The—uh—the A train was running local this morning, and it really ticked me off.”

Calvin smiles again, the inverse reaction to Garret Charles (who rolls his eyes so hugely, I think he’s
either having a stroke or doing a corneal impression of the setting sun), and says, “Will you be around for a few days is what I meant.”

Holy cow!

“Absolutely,” I say, or scream. “Absolutely I’ll be around for a few days.” Since Mom and Dad have probably rented my room out already, or Anthony has turned it into a free-weight studio, I’m practically not even lying.

Sammy stands from behind the piano and says, “Can I just make a note about something, Nate? What’s your top note?”

My top note? Vocally? I always crack on the bridge of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” (the Jennifer Holliday version, not the movie—as if).

“Jeez, I’m not exactly sure. I’m a—uh—‘boy soprano with a ballsy chest voice,’ according to my best friend.”

Sammy looks at the team, and his eyes go wide: “I think I’m going to Tweet that later on.” Though I might have misheard him.

A knock from behind me, and I turn to see a short black man duck his head in and say, “We got this studio now, folks,” and Rex says, “Just one second, sir, I promise we’re just on our way.”

The whole team stands on cue, desperate for some fresh, wet air, I presume. Rex Rollins walks up to me
and says, “Well, nice job today, Nate, and welcome to New York.” And all those crazy quirks about his face, the rolling chin and sweaty forehead, they melt away. And he just about looks like Santa Claus after a close shave.

“Thank you, Mr. Rollins,” I say, and when Marc, the sassier of the two bearded boys, opens the door to let me out, and I turn to thank the rest of the team, they’re all hunched over the desk, chatting loudly. Marc says, “You see that girl in the corner, the one with the long hair?”

And indeed, there she is, a new girl I hadn’t even noticed, sitting in a metal fold-up chair and looking at her iPhone (an iPhone for everyone! I wonder if you just
get
one at the Lincoln Tunnel, if you come in via car and not bus).

“That girl,” Marc says, “is the
reader
. And her job is to read all the parts on the page that
aren’t
your part.” Oh, God. “So you were really
just
supposed to be reading Elliott.” He’s gaining volume and kind of enjoying ridiculing me, the way somebody just a few years older than you can love power more than genuinely old people like your parents.

“Though”—a voice sneaks up, and Calvin pops out from behind Marc’s shoulder—“your best friend is right. You’re definitely ballsy, buddy.” He pats me on the head and says, “Nice to meet you, Natey Foster.”

And I decide that Natey Foster is a better stage name than Anthony Foster anyway, a better stage name all along. Especially if I can learn to say it without a stutter.

I’m floating back to the elevator bank, my limbs and bookbag and good-luck rabbit foot drifting around me as if suspended in the syrupy ooze of celebration. And as I turn the corner, past the Vitamin Water display and the pole-dance girls (cooling down with a series of stretches that should
not
be legal in public, let alone a hallway), Marc comes running after me.

“Nate,” Marc says, suddenly in a nice voice. He’s not out of breath at all, and probably spends most of his life in the gym on account of his rippling biceps, not that a kid like me would notice them. “Could you just come back to the room, for one more second?”

“Did I leave something in there?” I ask, following him back.

“The team just wants to talk to you.”

Usually when groups of adults want to speak to me it’s because a grandparent has died or I’ve let Feather pee on somebody’s flower bed.

“Nate!” they all say when I walk through the door.

“Yes?” I say back, or yell, or scream.

“We can’t stop talking about you,” one of them says. “We’ve never seen an audition like yours.” At
this point, forgive me, the dizziness of the day has taken such a toll, I’m not even sure whose mouth is moving. I’m not even sure if it’s a person talking, and not my dreams.

“I hope that’s a good thing,” I say, and can feel my leg shaking.

“Well, it’s always good to be memorable,” Garret Charles says, “though we can’t figure out what
makes
you so memorable.” He appears to now be wearing all
three
pairs of his glasses. Man, he must be old.

I turn to the side, right here on the centered
x
, and point at my mouth: “Usually it’s the underbite. My most memorable feature is my underbite, and it goes down from there, literally.”

“Nate,” Rex Rollins says, “is this cell phone number, here, on your application sheet—is this the best number to call you?”

“Absolutely sir,” I say, or maybe shout or sing.

“Okay, well, as long as you’re in New York anyway, we may want to see you again. For a callback. So just . . . stand by.”

Stand by, indeed.

Calvin gets up again. So far, he’s my best friend here, tall and footbally but with none of the football vibe I’ve come to associate with guys who look like him. He doesn’t seem to want to beat me up at all.

“Hey, and Nate,” he says, opening the door,
showing me to the hallway for the hundredth time today. “Don’t be afraid to put a little more deodorant on. You know? It’s something every guy goes through, and it’s probably time for you as well.”

Nobody in my family would ever have given me such simple, helpful advice.

Anthony would have wrapped it in a lecture on how it wouldn’t matter even if I
didn’t
stink, because no girl would want to come near me in a million years. And Dad wouldn’t have even noticed me, himself smelling like janitor fumes (equal parts Lysol and banana peels, like a comedy act gone horribly clean). And Mom? Well, Mom can never have a tough talk with me, passing it all off to Dad, who passes it all off to God. Mom just talks in figure eights, making everything around her dizzy.

“Honest, Nate,” Calvin says, “I have to put on my Mitchum three times a day in the summer, sometimes.” (
Mitchum!
So much for the store-brand stuff that I packed.) “Wait’ll
you
survive a New York summer.”

And he hands me a ten-dollar bill.

With that, I’m drifting back down the hall, out to the street, off to Duane Reade, floating and stinking and smiling, off to the Mitchum deodorant aisle, a grown-up in New York City.

Not only alive, by God, but thriving.

A
nd starving. Thriving and starving and stinking broke (and stinking
stinking
) and homeless. Oh my God, it’s gotten superdark out, too, superfast. How did I not plan for this?

What would the character Elliott do?

E.T. would probably build Elliott a fort out of Reese’s Pieces, or something.

That settles it.

I’ll pick up some Reese’s Pieces en route to the Mitchum deodorant aisle, as inspiration. Plus, Reese’s are loaded with protein (peanut butter is a complex protein, according to the parts of my Health class I didn’t practice my autograph during), and I’ve got to get something to eat. Anything at this point.

It’s five o’clock, and this Duane Reade across from Port Authority, brightly lit and practically cheerful, might be the nicest drugstore I’ve ever visited, decorated with
cutouts of ghosts and goblins: something that might’ve scared me even just a few years ago, when I was a kid.

I’ve got ten dollars, exactly, ten dollars and one penny to stretch between candy corn (starch), Reese’s Pieces (protein), and, critically, Mitchum (pride).

Also, I should figure out where I’m going to sleep tonight. Yeah, that.

Starmites!
Where am I going to sleep? (1989; sixty performances; the musical’s setting was a place called Shreikwood Forest, and I’m not kidding.)

Starmites
my life to oblivion.

And as I break into my version of a mild panic (lightly humming the Vietnam evacuation scene from
Miss Saigon
in an unreasonably high key), I get the first good idea in all of this trip. The Duane Reade travel aisle is awash in everything a kid like me would need: tweezers (never underestimate the power of tweezers) and mini-deodorants and mouthwash and—this is the exciting part—an entire bin full of cell-phone chargers.

I drop to my knees and rummage through, finally landing upon my beloved/hated Nokia plug-in. It’s $4.99, on sale, and that should leave enough change for one more item: I go with Reese’s Pieces, figuring food is more important than my stench right now and that I can take care of all that by giving myself a good scrub-down later on tonight.

In the bathroom of wherever I . . . uh . . . end up.

Starmites
.

“Would you like to make a donation to children with cerebral palsy?” the salesgirl says, scanning my items. I’m actually kind of glad I’m not buying my new Mitchum, because a girl would be embarrassing to buy deodorant in front of. It’s like how I can’t figure out how
any
adult buys toilet paper with a straight face.

“Sorry, I can’t afford it,” I say, “but would you like to make a donation to children who don’t have a place to sleep tonight?”

She doesn’t laugh.

I make for the exit, and in the city wind I’m an instant icicle, a Nate-pop, and duck back into the store to throw my jeans on over my flag-size shorts. This is like trying to stuff overbaggy boxers into a pair of tight pants. I don’t know how Anthony does it. This is the chief reason I wear tighty-whities.

Then I do something really bad, and I’m just going to fully disclose it here because I can edit it out later. Sitting just by the drugstore exit, a box teems with donated winter coats.

A Homeless Winter Coat drive.

Everything is extreme here. Winter doesn’t really start back home, not on the clock anyway, until mid-November. I guess in Manhattan you have to start putting on winter coats early in the season, so you
don’t freeze on your walk between Duane Reade and the cardboard box you’ll eventually sleep in tonight.

“I’ll just Google this charity and donate my first week of
E.T
. salary directly to the homeless,” I say out loud. And when I finally find a winter coat I like—a big hood trimmed with fake fur, and a cool crisscross of electric yellow and burgundy—a security guard from Duane Reade appears like a ghost, presumably to hang/prosecute me. I throw on the jacket and dash out onto Forty-second Street, smacking straight into a pretzel cart and a woman with a stroller and a guy on a scooter and a couple other kids.