Someday, Someday, Maybe Read Online Free PDF Page A

even just for a second, before it goes back underground. It’s just a superstition, but looking at the river, the boats, the sign leaving Brooklyn that says “Watchtower” in big red letters, is a ritual that reminds me I am small, I am one of thousands—no—one of millions of people who looked at this river before me, from a boat or a car or the window of the D train, who came to New York with a dream, who achieved it or didn’t, but nonetheless made the same effort I’m making now. It keeps things in perspective, and strangely, it gives me hope.

3
 
    The casting place that’s holding the session for Niagara dishwashing detergent has one of those bathroom-stall-sized ancient New York elevators that move so slowly you think it might be stuck, and I’m crammed in with what appear to be two child actors and their mom. They’re twins, I think, a boy and a girl, with reddish hair and freckles. The little girl flashes me a big smile that looks like it’s been perfected by hours of practice in the mirror. She twirls a fat, shiny curl around and around her finger.
    “Pretty hair,” I tell her.
    “I sleep on a special silk pillow so the curls don’t smoosh,” she replies, beaming.
    “Fancy,” I say, smiling back at her but achieving nowhere near her wattage. “You guys want to push the button for me? I’m going to four.”
    “I’ll push it!” the little boy offers.
    “No! I’ll push it,” his sister says, giving him a little shove. “It’s my callback.”
    The little boy shrinks back from the elevator buttons and I smile sympathetically at their mom, but she seems mesmerized by a spot somewhere north of the top of my head, so I decide to take a sudden interest in the laces of my shoes and endure the rest of the long, creaky ride in silence. Even in the best of elevators, I think, there’s no place where time passes so slowly.
    Upstairs, the waiting room is crowded, which means there must be a few different casting calls. There are boys and girls near the age of the elevator twins; a couple of men in their fifties, both in suit and tie; and several girls who remind me of me, but a better, more put-together me. The me who would play me in the TV movie of the fictional life of the real me.
    I sign in.
Name
Time arrived
Time scheduled
Agency
Soc Sec #
    While writing my information in the tiny spaces allotted by the sign-in sheet, I try to subtly scan and analyze the list of those who’ve auditioned before me. I’m a sign-in sheet sleuth looking for clues. I’m trying to figure out how many people they’ve seen already today, and if I know any of them, and if they’re from my agency, and if they were on time, and if they have neater handwriting than mine. Anything at all to indicate what a person who books a job does differently from what I do. If my appointment were five minutes earlier, would I book the job? If I made a smiley face out of the “o” in Penelope, like the person who signed in a few people in front of me did, would I work more? If I were the first person they saw today instead of the tenth, would I—
    “Franny? Is that you? It’s Franny, right?”
    My cheeks go hot. I’ve been caught. I drop the pen more quickly than a truly innocent person would, and look up.
    “Franny Banks, right? From Stavros’s class? Or have I gone totally koo-koo bananas?” The girl standing before me laughs, doubles over with laughter in fact, like someone who might truly be koo-koo bananas, and continues laughing at a volume that says she doesn’t care that the other twenty or so people in the waiting room are all staring at her.
    I’ve never seen this person before, and I don’t know how she knows me or my acting teacher, John Stavros, but the first thing I’m struck by is her incredibly long, shiny blond hair. Also, she’s tiny, like a doll who became a person, or a person pretending to be a doll, with her hands elegantly angled, fingers outstretched and ready to hold a variety of objects, and