So. Really. What do you do there?”
Fred paused for dramatic effect before he finally answered.
“Proofreading.”
“Proofreading,” I said. “Really! You know how to do that?” I was impressed.
“Any idiot can learn.” Fred had just finished doing a showcase production Off-Off B’way where he played a woman. He looked pretty good with red lipstick and dangling earrings. It had gotten him great attention and an agent, but apparently it hadn’t readily turned into income.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Me? No place. I have no job. Hey,” I said, “I’ll walk you to yours, okay?”
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll have to go through Grand Central. I’m working there two days and I already know all the shortcuts.”
I loved rush hour in New York. Swarms of people moved by us in rapid succession. It was like a movie montage of people hurrying, scurrying to buses, trains and planes. Fred worked the graveyard shift and went to work at five o’clock when everyone else went home.
“This is great!” I said. “I don’t get this in my apartment.”
I accompanied Fred through Grand Central Station, onto the escalator into the Pan Am Building, and continued to ride the elevator with him to his office. I walked him down the hall and into reception, when he finally turned and blocked me with his hand.
“You have to stop! Now! You can’t go farther than this. You can’t come with me to work,” said Fred.
“But what am I going to do?” I walked Fred to the end of the reception area, peeking through the archway into the long hallway. “Hey. How do the guys look here? Have you had time to check anyone out?”
Fred and I had met in acting class five years earlier. The teacher assigned us a scene where I played a girl whose plans to hang herself were put on hold until she met her new next-door neighbor. Just in case he turned out To Be Somebody.
A nice-looking guy whisked by us down the corridor. I followed him with my eyes until I saw the band of gold glittering from a stack of briefs. “Too bad,” I told Fred. “So, any cute lawyers around here you can fix me up with?”
“I’m looking for the same thing myself,” said Fred.
“Well, keep your eyes open! For both of us!”
“We’ll double,” said Fred, pointing for me to walk back to the direction of the elevator bank. “I don’t want to be late.”
“How are things going with Larry? Good? Maybe one night you and Larry, and me and a lawyer cou—”
“I’ll talk to you later,” said Fred, literally pushing me toward the elevator.
“Maybe tomorrow,” I called out after him. “Maybe tonight,” I said, getting into the elevator. “I can call you here. I bet I can get a job accompanying people to their jobs. What do you think?”
The elevator doors shut tight before I found out.
Earlier that day I tried to sign up with a Temp Agency. STAR TEMPS: YOU CAN STILL BE A STAR WHILE YOU WAIT FOR THAT BREAK! The moment I walked in the door I knew I did not want to be there. They gave me a written test.
Here are three numbers: 162, 539 and 287.
Which number is the biggest?
Which number is the second biggest?
Which number is the third biggest?
Not the smallest, the third biggest. There were thirty-five problems. That made a page of one hundred and five sets of numbers. My eyes were starting to cross. 1086975, 1097656, 1086456. There were no commas. I was losing my mind. I went to the guy at the desk. I did not want to take the test.
“I do not want to take this test,” I said to the guy at the desk. “I am a college graduate. I know how to count.”
“If you want to be a file clerk you have to take this test,” he said.
“I don’t want to file.”
“Are you saying you don’t want to be a clerk?”
“I’ll be a clerk,” I said. “But I don’t want to file.”
“All clerks have to file. Unless you type. You type?”
“I do. I’ll be a typist.”
“Clerk-Typist,” said the guy. “Is that what you want to be?”
“Yes. Yes! That’s exactly what I want to be. And Receptionist.”
“What?”
“Receptionist,” I said. “I can answer the phone.”
“Well, which? Clerk-Typist or Receptionist?”
“Both.”
“Both? What do you mean?”
“Clerk-Typist Slash Receptionist. That’s what I mean. I can type. I can answer the phone.”
“I don’t get it.”
“There’s nothing to get. I can do both. I can type. I can answer the phone. Clerk-Typist Slash Receptionist,” I said looking into his blank face, feeling the need to repeat it as if I was speaking Greek.
“Oh. Then you have to take a typing test.”
I left.
It had started to rain. I reached into my bag for my umbrella and pulled out a recent copy of Backstage. There was an ad for an audition cross-town in Hell’s Kitchen for a show. A nonpaying show. A showcase. A musical. The call was for WOMEN: TWENTIES AND THIRTIES. I fit.
I walked from STAR TEMPS until I saw a small sign pounded into the brick wall along the side of an alley on 52nd Street near Ninth Avenue. The sign had the initials ACT. Artists Creating Theater.
I entered. The place looked like an old-fashioned casino in the Catskills that had been ransacked. An unkempt, overweight man sat next to his disheveled-looking ten-year-old son who was singing along with the out-of-tune piano. Finally the man playing the piano spoke.
“Would you like to sing something a cappella?” he asked me.
Actually, no…I did not want to sing something a cappella.
“What are my other options?” I asked.
“I can play a couple of chords,” he said.
He kept his word and played a four-chord introduction. My song was from the musical Fiorello.
“What a situation, ain’t it awful,” I sang a cappella.
The phone rang.
