Dear Dwayne, With Love Read online

  “Break a leg!” Thomas says, the last word overwritten by the jingle of the coffee shop’s door as it closes behind me.

  FOUR

  Text conversation outside of coffee shop:

  Trevor: Hey hot stuf. Don’t 4get it’s Monday. My place? Bring the black thigh-hi’s. My favrite!

  Me: FavOrite.

  Trevor: Wha?

  Me: You spelled favorite wrong.

  Trevor: Ur correcting my spelling?

  Me: Can’t talk. Going in to audition.

  Trevor: Break a leg. Or don’t b/c then you can’t wear the thigh-hi’s. Mmmm sexy.

  Me: Sorry. Unexpected plans tonight. Will have to rain check.

  Trevor: Ur blue-balling me again? ☹☹☹

  Me: If I made you an appointment for a pedicure, would you go?

  Trevor: What R U talking about?

  I set my phone to vibrate.

  FIVE

  The audition is, luckily, not far from here. A few blocks over at a repurposed school. Something about a music video. No lines to learn, but apparently, I have to dance. My agent—and I use that term loosely because Portland’s acting scene isn’t exactly lighting up the phone lines of the Oscars’ voting membership—said that it’s for a local band with money from some big LA producer. They’re going all out with the video for their debut album, despite the fact that MTV is more concerned with pregnant teenagers and catfishing humans than filling the airwaves with actual music.

  Whatever. I need the résumé credit. Plus, day rate on a union shoot would be awesome. Craft service? Hot musicians? Hair and makeup? What better way to spend a day or two?

  I park up the street, cram one quick bite of the maple scone into my face, and check the rearview mirror—freshen lips, wipe off offending crumbs. My phone buzzes against the side of the plastic cup holder and scares the crap out of me.

  Text, from Viv, one of the few human beings with a soul at Imperial Health and Wellness:

  Where R U? Cluckers meeting 12 PM, moved to Conf Rm B. DON’T BE LATE.

  Even though I’m living in Fancy Actor Dreamland for the next forty-five minutes, dressed like a grunge Rockette from the Cobain days and not a “professional” twenty-nine-year-old woman, I do have to go back to work today. There, properly attired in my cubicle that is shamelessly decorated with Dwayne Johnson’s face and stunning muscles, I shall resume processing medical claims and smiling through the phone when someone screams at me about how we refuse to cover her boob job. (Although, between you and me, much of my time is spent hunched over the billing-code book with my back turned away from the wider viewing public, my forehead resting on my fingers so it looks like I’m searching for some obscure code—perhaps hypertrichosis: “werewolf syndrome”—so I can just take a quick nap. Naps are good for you. Jerky Jackie said so.)

  Being a part-time actress and full-time sister/daughter/auntie/worker chicken/substandard girlfriend can be very exhausting.

  So is staying out late after acting workshops. Like last night. Every Sunday, I swear I won’t follow the other budding stars and starlets to the bar, but I do it because I’m stupid and weak and I really like drinking things that make my lips tingle.

  And Trevor and I have reached that point in our on-again, off-again relationship of convenience where we schedule sex: Mondays, Wednesdays, usually Saturdays if he doesn’t have a Frisbee golf thing or if I’m not babysitting a member of my family.

  Truth: I don’t have plans tonight. I just don’t want to wear black thigh-highs to play Hide the Sausage. Can’t we just bone and then binge on two-bite brownies and Netflix like normal friends with benefits?

  Truth number two: I can’t stop thinking about those toenails.

  But today, lingering hangover and canceled sex date aside, there is something magical to look forward to. The MotherCluckers meet up every two weeks in an available conference room and feast on whatever desserty decadence the assigned Bringer of the Treats has found while we dish on the latest gossip, celebrity news, TV/movies, and books. Management agreed to let us do it when some European study convinced them that productivity spikes in employees who are granted a slice of time during their workday for book clubs, yoga, Zumba, or healthy walks around the neighborhood. (Thank you, Europeans.)

  Since none of us own yoga pants that have ever seen a single downward dog, we get away with calling the MotherCluckers a “book club.” Someone brings in a few books to have on the table, and then we slather our faces in processed sugar.

  What will it be this week? Éclair? Cream puff? Napoleon? A simple but always delicious maple bar?

  It’s sort of awesome.

  What is not awesome are the forty-two stairs I am going to have to climb to get into this Jurassic-era brick building. Honestly, what happened to equal access for all? Including women in ridiculous chunky heels that could probably support a car’s weight should she really need to change a tire?

  Though I do manage to make it into the building, and just in time as a fat gray spring cloud has decided to pour her overburdened heart out on the outdoors, my stomach sinks when I walk into the holding area and see this is a cattle call. Overriding the stale smell of old building is the virtual tidal wave of body spray and perfumes worn by two dozen other girls in various states of dress, some more goth than grunge, way more black fishnets than red flannel, and all of them younger, tighter, prettier, likely dressed in outfits they had to borrow from the back part of Mom’s closet, that space where you keep stuff you’re just not ready to get rid of because you can feel your youth draining away like the last few drops of Irish cream from the Bailey’s bottle.

  I really need to go back to LA.

  I sign in and hand over the obligatory headshot and résumé, my stomach settling a little when I recognize the casting assistant. Show business in this town is a tight-knit group. Any talent who spends more than a month in the audition trenches gets to know the casting assistants and casting directors on a first-name basis. This one—Brittany, as bubbly and bonny as her name suggests—asks about my family, if my sister has room for new patients and if I can get her a discount ha ha ha (everyone wants a nose job on the cheap), how she hasn’t seen me around a lot so where have I been hiding?

  “Ask my agent,” I say.

  “Still with Lady Macbeth?” My agent, Janice, is a former child actress. Did a lot of commercials in LA as a kid, made the transition to Disney programming, and then after college she did one season with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as the conniving wife of the doomed Macbeth. Then she had an affair with the (married) director and hightailed it out of town swollen with their alleged love child, landed in Portland, and decreed herself the city’s best agent. Janice is a woman of many fictions, but she’s treated me very well, so who am I to question where she stands in the agent hierarchy?

  “Hey, is your email still the same?” I nod. She lowers her voice. “I’m running a new improv group on Thursday nights, if you’re interested.”

  “That would be awesome . . .” I’ve done a few of Brittany’s improv classes. She’s hilarious, and the crew she runs with is super talented—whenever she offers me a spot, I accept. Always time well spent. But she keeps it on the down-low, an invite-only sort of thing, so we don’t have to babysit all the teenagers looking for a venue to make dick jokes. Such jokes should be left to the professionals.

  “I’ll send you the details. And they should call you in about twenty minutes,” she says, leaning closer. “I hope you’re ready to shake your ass. The lead singer is in there, and he’s about twelve and a total perv.”

  “Awesome.” I give her a weak thumbs-up and pick a seat off to the side. Yeah, I’m lucky because I look younger than my real age, but seriously, I still look way older than any of the girls here. Why the hell did Janice send me out on this? Where are the real gigs, you know? Like tampon or feminine deodorant commercials? The residuals on those can be nuts—I knew a woman in LA who bought a house in the Hollywood Hills just from the residuals she earned on Mass
engill Douche ads. Sure, she was known as the Douche Lady, but she has an infinity pool and a pool boy named Sven. A clean vagina is no laughing matter.

  Man, I miss my LA people. I’m not gonna lie. Friends who talked about acting, friends who went to the movies with me when we weren’t talking about acting, friends who shared a plate of sweet potato fries after the movie so we could dissect what we’d just watched, friends who let you practice your monologue the night before class so you’d really nail the pathos, friends who would read your lame first attempt at writing a screenplay and offer constructive feedback, friends who would let you raid their wardrobe so you wouldn’t have to buy a new outfit for an audition . . .

  Portland’s great, but it’s not LA.

  Fifteen credits short of a bachelor of fine arts, I used the last of my student loan money to put new tires and brakes on Flex Kavana (my Honda, named after Dwayne Johnson’s first wrestling name) so I could blast into Hollywood because obviously, after doing years of theater in junior high, high school, and college, I must’ve had a talent they’d never seen before.

  They had seen it before.

  On a million other eager beavers who had no idea that Los Angeles was ready with her gaping maw. If the chronic swarm of LAPD helicopters had infrared for lost dreams, said corpses would be splattered over every paved inch of that city.

  I lived in a shitty three-bedroom, fourth-floor apartment with three other very smelly actors in the sizzling, overcrowded San Fernando Valley. Fun fact: A severed head was found in the dumpster of a pizza place just around the block. One of my roommates took a picture of it. (She was really weird, actually.)

  It was basically the best time of my life.

  Two years, three months, nine days in the City of Angels. That was it. Tons of unpaid gigs, necessary to build a résumé, as well as some paid “acting” jobs—hand modeling for a medical-device company where I just had to pretend I was pushing buttons on an EEG machine, two weeks as a zombie (so much fun, except for the 5:00 a.m. call time to spend three hours in makeup) on a low-budget film, as a day player (that means the actor gets a few lines) who then dies on camera for a now-canceled CBS show. It was down to me and one other girl for a pilot that went on to a full-season order for NBC. Booking this gig would’ve been a real coup—not only would it have changed my life, but I’m also a size 10, which is pretty much huge by LA standards, so landing a lead role on a network television show where I wouldn’t have been playing a frazzled mom but rather a powerful, single CEO in search of love in the cutthroat world of online sex-toy sales?

  I mentioned it was a comedy, right?

  That loss led to a bottle of Black Label, a dozen or two Krispy Kremes quietly delivered by sympathetic roommates, and a week spent under my covers bingeing Gilmore Girls on DVD. Not one of my prouder moments.

  When actors aren’t acting, though, we wait tables and froth nonfat, organic milk for overpriced coffee drinks, spending more than we earn on headshots and acting classes and teeth whitening and movies and plays (because we can write those off!). Acting is the greatest job in the world, if you can stand the constant rejection and recurrent bouts of self-doubt without becoming addicted to some hazardous substance. (Like sugar.)

  But it only took a single phone call from my sister, Dr. Jacqueline Collins Steele, for it all to come to a screeching halt: “Mommy is sick. We need you to come home.”

  So I did.

  And once surgery and a little radiation took care of Mommy’s very pissed-off thyroid, and she was well enough to resume normal nagging duties while stroking a rather frightening bright-pink scar at her neck (she now tells people it happened when she was abducted by aliens and transported outside our galaxy on their ship), it didn’t seem right to leave and go back to LA. Plus, I was broke. The move back to the Pacific Northwest ate the bulk of my savings.

  Of course, there was plenty to spend in the Guilt Bank: “You should stay. Mommy misses you too much when you’re so far away,” and “Mommy sure worried about you down in that dirty, scary place,” my sisters and well-meaning family friends would drone. Note: LA isn’t that dirty. Hollywood sort of is, and maybe some spots in the Valley, but the beaches are nice.* And it’s not scary. Unless you find yourself in the wrong neighborhood after dark. But that’s true of any city.

  (Oh, and before you think it’s weird that we call my mother “Mommy”—everyone calls her that. That’s just who she is. Everyone’s mom. It’s how she introduces herself to new people, in her long broom skirts circa 1974 and the beads and the no-bra policy and her Margaret Atwood hair. I’d tell you that she’s eccentric but given that her daughters are named after women who’ve made fortunes spinning yarns about throbbing manhoods and bursting cleavage . . .)

  Even finding an acting community in Portland wasn’t enough to safeguard my sanity during the time I had to cohabit with Mommy. When it got to the point where I was considering living in my car, I had to make a change, or as Jerky Jackie said, “Find a respectable, grown-up occupation with benefits and a retirement savings plan, Danielle.”

  So I went to a job fair. And Imperial Health and Wellness hired me.

  Six blissful years later, here I am, sitting in an abandoned school with aspiring actresses who likely still wait outside convenience stores and bribe hobos to buy them shitty beer.

  That was one thing my dad did manage to impart before disappearing: If some poor kid from Hayward, California, can become the next greatest thing in the World Wrestling Federation (rebranded as World Wrestling Entertainment in 2002), then I can do whatever the hell I wanna do too.

  Although it’s fair to say that poor kid from Hayward has done a smidge better than I have. Hey, at my age, The Rock was still finding his sea legs, though his sea legs probably weren’t adorned in ripped fishnets, but yeah . . . I can’t panic yet.

  My phone chimes again. A text from my middle sister, Georgette. Another inquiry about Mommy’s birthday fête. It’s in what, two months? We have plenty of time to order a carrot cake. Sheesh. Mommy wants you to bring a date to her sixtieth so you don’t feel left out. Are you still dating that one guy?

  My family’s inability—unwillingness?—to even attempt to remember Trevor’s name is blindingly annoying, even though, to be honest, I don’t know what the deal is with us most of the time, either; we call each other “carnal companions.” I think we’re both at that age where a partner free of STDs is enough, as is having someone to call “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” to keep nagging relatives off our backs (“Aren’t you ever going to settle down?”), but we’re both a little fickle, and though we have our moments where we coo at each other, we also have those moments where we say stuff like “If I ever do get married, my partner will be into ____________,” and we fill in the blank with something we know the other person isn’t really into. Which says a lot about how we’re probably not going to commit to each other in any real, legal capacity anytime soon.

  Our unofficial treaty has one important caveat: If we want to date someone else or swipe right or whatever, we have to be honest. No one has time for chlamydia these days.

  So I can’t totally blame my family for their condescension. Before Trevor, there was a string of failed relationships, both before and after LA. Love is mercurial in the acting world—you work very closely with a set group of people for an intense, concentrated amount of time. You learn to trust these people—you have to, or else you won’t give your best performance—plus you’re working insane hours and they see you when you’re not at your best. When that kind of vulnerability is laid bare, the heart can’t help but respond. These “showmances” are basically the reason so many Hollywood marriages end in divorce after just a few years.

  But being a member of Clan Steele does not make this process any easier. Pretty much as soon as I introduce a guy to my family, he bails. I tried to tell my sisters that our family jinxes every relationship I’ve ever had, but then they both reminded me how they’re engaged and/or married and their respective partner
s haven’t run away scared.

  “You date losers, Danielle,” Jerky Jackie said. “Face facts.”

  And, lord knows, Jerky Jackie is all about facts. It’s why she signs every email and letter to me with her full name and all those stupid initials to remind me of all the brainiac things she’s done: Jacqueline Collins Steele, MD, FACS. I think FACS stands for “Fabulous at Condescending [to my] Sisters.”

  She’s very good at it.

  INT. ODD-SMELLING AUDITION WAITING ROOM - DAY

  DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON

  (pushes librarian glasses up his nose)

  Kid, I hate to break it to ya, but it’s not always about you.

  DANIELLE

  Sure it is. Didn’t you get the memo? Poor me, my daddy left so I have abandonment issues and a total lack of follow-through in pretty much everything I touch.

  DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON

  You should call that therapist Jerky Jackie recommended. She has a wait list.

  DANIELLE

  I’d rather talk to the FedEx driver than any shrink Jackie recommends.

  DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON

  Your sister is a doctor. She just wants to help.

  DANIELLE

  You clearly know nothing about Jacqueline Collins Steele, MD, FACS.

  DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON

  Talk therapy can do wonders, Danielle.

  DANIELLE

  I’m talking to you. Is that not enough?

  DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON

  I’m a figment of your very active imagination. This is sort of unhealthy, as are your feelings of inferiority in light of your older sisters’ successes. If I let everyone who was better than me rule my life, I’d still be walking around with seven bucks in my pocket.

  DANIELLE

  With your seven bucks and my gift card to Baja Fresh, we could get lunch after this audition. I’m starving.

  A girl a few seats over stands and plants herself next to me, interrupting my imaginary conversation, one hand holding the spaghetti straps of a very sheer triangle-shaped top. “Excuse me—I know this is super weird, but can you help me tie this?”