Attack of the Theater People Read Online Free PDF

can’t fill.
    “Who is she?” I ask after Milagros has gone back to bed.
    My father drips melted cheese onto his broad, hairy chest. He’s wearing a robe now, but it’s one of those short ones, which is just too embarrassing. “She’s my new domestic.”
    Domestic? This is not a word we Zannis have ever used as a noun, being just a generation or two removed from immigrant pushcart vendors ourselves. Employing a live-in domestic seems entirely too you-ain’t-Kunta-Kinte-yo’-name-is-Toby-now for us.
    “She lives here?”
    “I was gonna tell ya’, but I thought you weren’t comin’ home till tomorrow.”
    “Where does she come from?”
    “Nicaragua. Fran Nudelman found her for me in Miami. It’s a sweetheart deal. She cleans a bunch of the houses in the neighborhood and lives here in exchange for doin’ the cookin’. I hope you don’t mind I gave her your old room.”
    “No, it’s fine.”
    “I thought about givin’ her the guest room, but your room has the best light.”
    “I understand.”
    “You sure? ’Cuz if it bothers you, we should talk about it. It’s not healthy to let feelings fester inside you, y’know.” After my evil ex-stepmonster returned to whatever hellhole vomited her onto this earth, Al got just enough therapy to be really annoying.
    “It’s
fine
,” I say.
    “Aha!” he says, shaking a sausage-sized finger. “I knew it. You do mind.”
    “IDON’TCAREABOUTTHEGODDAMNEDROOM!”
    Al furrows his eyebrows, two mustaches colliding. “What’s botherin’ you, kid?”
    You mean, aside from the fact that my most cherished life’s dream has turned into a nightmare? And that I have no money and no job and no idea what I’m going to do next? And that you’re going to say, “I told you acting school was a lousy idea?” And then bitch about all the trouble I caused making you pay for it and how you’ve wasted twenty grand and isn’t it time I grew up and got a real job? You mean, besides that?
    “Nothing,” I say.
     
    I rise the next afternoon so hungover even my sweat smells like tequila. The Tennessee Williams Wake-Up Call. What’s more, my teeth seem to have grown fur. I shower until I use up all the hot water, then throw on my smoky clothes and duck out to avoid my father. I know I’ll have to tell him eventually, but tuition’s not due until August, and it‘s possible he could get hit by a bus or a falling piano by then, in which case what’s the point of spoiling his final moments on earth? I escape the house, hoping to leave behind the looming dread that sticks to me like tar.
    I head across the street to find out what’s happened to Natie, a process otherwise known as Looking for Trouble. Just last year, while engaged in a light-saber battle with a visiting friend from college, Natie broke the back of his mother’s couch, then invited me over and purposely stood in a way so I’d lean against it and take the blame. When I later found out what happened, he said, “What do you care? Al paid for it.”
    Natie.
    I press the doorbell, which is followed by a voice that sounds like Ethel Merman slamming her fingers in a car door.
    “NATHAAAAAAAN! ANSWER THE DOOOOOOOR.”
    It’s the Call of the Nudelmans.
    “NATHAAAAAAAN? DIDJA HEAR ME?”
    How could he not? Fran Nudelman could broadcast to our troops overseas.
    Someone else shouts, “NATHAN’S NOT HERE.” Someone meaning Natie.
    “WHADDYA MEAN, YOU’RE NOT HERE?” Fran screeches. “WHO AM I TALKING TO, A GHOST?”
    From the other side of the house her husband, Stan, answers, “DON’T YA’ REMEMBAH? WE’RE SUPPOSED TO SAY NATIE’S NOT HERE.”
    “OH, RIGHT, RIGHT, SO SUE ME.”
    I ring the bell again.
    “STAAAAAAAN! ANSWER THE DOOOOOOR.”
    Rather than endure round two, I try the knob and let myself in, just in time to see an Ewok scurrying out of the entry. I lunge after it, grabbing the hood of its Georgetown sweatshirt, revealing the fuzzy, teddy-bear head of Nathan Nudelman.
    “It’s all a