want some?”
“Sure.”
Crispen hands me the joint. I rarely smoke up, but I figure if I can’t get food, at least I can get high. I fumble, burn my fingers, then pass the roach to Breffni, who inhales expertly. Filling his cheeks like a horn player.
“So what happened to that girl you were with, Biggs?” Crispen asks Augustus. “She was fine.”
“Gave her the boot. Possum lover. She played dead.” Turning to me, he asks, “You have a woman?”
“No.” Thinking about Melody. “I wouldn’t mind working on that girl at Feyenoord, though.”
“Specifically...” Breffni says, scooping another finger of lumpy batter from his bowl.
“The booker. What’s her name?”
Scowls of collective disgust.
Breffni groans. “Shawna?”
“No. What’s her name...Rianne? She gave me her number.”
Degrees of laughter all around.
“She’s as easy as pie,” Breffni snorts.
“Rianne’s not our booker, by the way,” Augustus says. “Rianne books the girls’ shoots. Shawna books ours. But by all means, go for it, Pappa. You’re just the kind of guy who’d make her runny. Damn, I’m in the mood! Let’s go out. Any of you have to be up tomorrow?”
“That reminds me,” I say. “Rianne told me to tell you guys we have some kind of go-see tomorrow morning.” I scan the room for my Feyenoord book, but my eyes can’t seem to keep up with my head. “Someone from Greece at 9:30.”
“Probably Eva again,” Crispen says. “I ain’t goin’. You?”
Augustus shakes his head.
I frown. “Are you guys mad?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Elite college football players skipping the NFL draft to join the pro bowling circuit. “Europe’s the big ticket.”
“Europe’s a sham, man,” Breffni says. “Guys have to pay their own way. By the time you cover rent, food, and smokes, there’s nothing left to take home. I have all the pictures I need for my book. This is the place to be, my fine feathered friend. Commercials. Movies. Hollywood without the beaches, tits, and cars. You can’t go to the can without pissing on someone who’s casting for something. Europe’s just pretty pictures. And kick-ass herb.”
“Have you ever done any movies?” I ask.
“When I was a kid in Buffalo, I worked all the time. Cutesy stuff, a couple of small roles in movies. Lots of commercials. Remember the Loony-Roos kid?”
“The kid who wouldn’t eat anything that wasn’t red? I thought that kid was blond.”
“That was me. I dye my hair brown now.”
“Damn.” Impressed. “Have you been in anything lately?”
“I was Dude Number 4 in a Schlitz spot, and the guy who gets pushed out of the way in Revenge of the Hammer. I haven’t gotten any speaking roles since high school. My career peaked at age thirteen.” He smiles. “It would be funny if it weren’t sad. That’s why I came to TO. They don’t call this Hollywood North for nothing. Forget about overseas.”
“They wouldn’t take us, anyway,” Augustus says.
“Why not?” I ask.
He pulls up his sleeve and rubs his arm.
“What’s that?”
“Skin tone.”
“You’re black, right?” Breffni asks.
“What do you think?” I feel the answer’s obvious, even though I still can’t figure out whether to capitalize black or put it in quotations.
“You’re light-skinned,” Augustus says. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll like you.”
“Like I said,” Crispen says, smiling. “Fresh meat. How old are you?”
“Twenty-one. You?”
“Twenty-four.”
“You?” I ask Breffni.
“Twenty-four.”
“How old are you?” I ask Augustus.
“Older than you.”
“Seriously. How old?”
“Seriously old.”
I turn to the others. “How old is he?”
Crispen and Breffni exchange glances. “We don’t know,” they both say.
“How do you not know?”
“He never tells us,” Crispen says.
“Put it this way,” Augustus adds. “I was doing shoots in New York while you were watching Hammy Hamster.”
“If you modelled in New York, what are you doing here?”
“Well,” he says slowly, “too many models in New York. I read somewhere that there are more models in the Big Apple than people in Jackson, Wyoming. And there’s less competition here. No offence.”
“No offence?” Breffni says. “Tell him what kind of modelling you were doing in New York.”
“Never mind that, Pappa. Money’s money.”
Breffni grins gleefully. “Biggs was a hand model.”
I did some hand modelling once in an internal video for the Department of National Defence. They had to shoot eighteen takes because I had trouble opening the envelope. The client blamed me. I blame extra-strength tamperproof glue. Hand modelling, like pretty much everything in life, is harder than it seems. I crane my head to study Augustus’s hands, but they’re now in the pockets of his sweater.
“Don’t blame me if people want to pay me serious cash to wear shiny things on my hands. And I’m doing more real modelling now, anyway. Hand modelling’s just for the money. So are we out or what?” Augustus asks, standing.
I peer at my watch. Somehow it’s already past 11:00. “I think I’ll have to pass. I’d better get some sleep if we have to be there for 9:15 tomorrow.”
“Forget it,” Crispen says. “You’ll have plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead.”
“Yeah, but if I don’t sleep, I’ll be dead that much sooner.”
They’re all looking at me. Didn’t Rianne say something about the Garage?
“Well,
