straight to Lee and Laurie. Sometimes I’m even on time! And guess where I head afterward? Kirk’s, of course.
Friday: Rise and Shine. And since I have no shift at Lee and Laurie and no desire to start any self-actualizing project, I find some way to waste the entire day. Like renting the complete movies of Bette Davis. Or giving myself a pedicure. Until Kirk and I go out for dinner, or simply sit around the apartment like the old married couple we are (not that he realizes that).
Saturday: The dreaded ten-to-four shift at Lee and Laurie. After a day like this, can you blame me for going straight to Kirk’s, where we order takeout and while the evening away in front of the TV or at the movies?
Sunday: Day of rest. Except when my mother manages to convince me of the utter necessity of my coming down to Marine Park for family dinner. Kirk comes, of course. After all, he loves my mother’s cooking. Kirk never says no to a Sunday in Brooklyn.
Now do you understand how I’ve gotten so wrapped up in being wrapped up every day of the week? Kirk and I might as well get married at this point. What would be the difference, anyway?
“The ring,” Michelle explained somewhat impatiently when I complained the next day about how much I am suffering and wondering, really, what it’s all going to get me.
“When a guy buys you a ring, it means something.” So I sat tight for yet another night, telling Kirk I had a monologue I was working on.“Oh yeah?” he said with surprise.
Of course he was surprised. I hadn’t done any auditioning since Rise and Shine became a cable-access phenomenon.Why should I? I was on the road to superstardom in a yellow leotard.
But suddenly there I was, reverting to my former self. The actor who had played Fefu in Fefu and Her Friends. (Don’t let the name fool you—this was a serious role.) The woman who had once wowed crowds at the Classic Stage Company with my powerful rendition of Miss Julie. In case you were wondering, I was once a force to be reckoned with. But an actor has to earn a living…
“What are you doing home?” Justin asked, loping in from God knows where. He’d turned down the last production gig he’d been offered, so I knew he hadn’t been working on the set all day. In fact, he seemed to be working less and less ever since he had landed a few commercial spots for a long-distance telephone service a year ago, which I thought was pretty ironic, considering the number of long-distance relationships Justin had been in (yes, Lauren wasn’t the only one. Denise, his previous girlfriend, was from Oak Park, Illinois, Justin’s hometown—a place Justin hadn’t lived in himself since he was twelve, although his romance with Denise had begun on a visit to relatives one summer when he was in college).The commercial, which featured Justin looking frazzled and gorgeous as he ran across a campus and up the dormitory stairs, all in time to pick up a long-distance call from his mom, was so well received that they made two more. One in which Justin leaped across buildings to pick up a call, and another where he hijacked a campus security cart. His success had mostly to do with that utterly beatific smile on his face as he picked up the receiver and said, “Hi, Mom.” Ironic, too, since both of Justin’s parents had been killed in an auto accident, leaving him an orphan at the tender age of twelve, shipped off to live in New York with his aging Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Burt, who were now gone a good nine years themselves. Maybe there was something of the yearning I knew he still felt for his parents injected in the smile he projected from the small screen once he picked up that telephone. Whatever it was, the commercial ran so often—it even made Superbowl Sunday slots—that Justin was still coasting on the pile of residuals money he’d racked up. Perhaps that was making it harder and harder for him to get out of bed for the odd production job that came his way.
“What does it
Friday: Rise and Shine. And since I have no shift at Lee and Laurie and no desire to start any self-actualizing project, I find some way to waste the entire day. Like renting the complete movies of Bette Davis. Or giving myself a pedicure. Until Kirk and I go out for dinner, or simply sit around the apartment like the old married couple we are (not that he realizes that).
Saturday: The dreaded ten-to-four shift at Lee and Laurie. After a day like this, can you blame me for going straight to Kirk’s, where we order takeout and while the evening away in front of the TV or at the movies?
Sunday: Day of rest. Except when my mother manages to convince me of the utter necessity of my coming down to Marine Park for family dinner. Kirk comes, of course. After all, he loves my mother’s cooking. Kirk never says no to a Sunday in Brooklyn.
Now do you understand how I’ve gotten so wrapped up in being wrapped up every day of the week? Kirk and I might as well get married at this point. What would be the difference, anyway?
“The ring,” Michelle explained somewhat impatiently when I complained the next day about how much I am suffering and wondering, really, what it’s all going to get me.
“When a guy buys you a ring, it means something.” So I sat tight for yet another night, telling Kirk I had a monologue I was working on.“Oh yeah?” he said with surprise.
Of course he was surprised. I hadn’t done any auditioning since Rise and Shine became a cable-access phenomenon.Why should I? I was on the road to superstardom in a yellow leotard.
But suddenly there I was, reverting to my former self. The actor who had played Fefu in Fefu and Her Friends. (Don’t let the name fool you—this was a serious role.) The woman who had once wowed crowds at the Classic Stage Company with my powerful rendition of Miss Julie. In case you were wondering, I was once a force to be reckoned with. But an actor has to earn a living…
“What are you doing home?” Justin asked, loping in from God knows where. He’d turned down the last production gig he’d been offered, so I knew he hadn’t been working on the set all day. In fact, he seemed to be working less and less ever since he had landed a few commercial spots for a long-distance telephone service a year ago, which I thought was pretty ironic, considering the number of long-distance relationships Justin had been in (yes, Lauren wasn’t the only one. Denise, his previous girlfriend, was from Oak Park, Illinois, Justin’s hometown—a place Justin hadn’t lived in himself since he was twelve, although his romance with Denise had begun on a visit to relatives one summer when he was in college).The commercial, which featured Justin looking frazzled and gorgeous as he ran across a campus and up the dormitory stairs, all in time to pick up a long-distance call from his mom, was so well received that they made two more. One in which Justin leaped across buildings to pick up a call, and another where he hijacked a campus security cart. His success had mostly to do with that utterly beatific smile on his face as he picked up the receiver and said, “Hi, Mom.” Ironic, too, since both of Justin’s parents had been killed in an auto accident, leaving him an orphan at the tender age of twelve, shipped off to live in New York with his aging Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Burt, who were now gone a good nine years themselves. Maybe there was something of the yearning I knew he still felt for his parents injected in the smile he projected from the small screen once he picked up that telephone. Whatever it was, the commercial ran so often—it even made Superbowl Sunday slots—that Justin was still coasting on the pile of residuals money he’d racked up. Perhaps that was making it harder and harder for him to get out of bed for the odd production job that came his way.
“What does it
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