Girl Act Read Online Free Page B

but still, I can’t turn the clock back. Too bad!
    Beth was standing by a dark vintage desk with a huge stack of 8x10’s and a one sheet pitch ‘speech’ about the guest casting director. It read blankety-blankety is now casting this year’s hottest ‘reality show’. Reality TV? I tried not to show my disappointment. Beth was very excited; she wanted a packed house to impress him. The rickety fold-up chairs were already arranged. At night, the parking lot would be used as everyone’s rehearsal spot, though I couldn’t image what lines anyone would need to rehearse for.
    “Mini interviews, just tell them that’s all. And they should be themselves,” Beth chirped in her sweet, southern voice.
    I nodded and scooped up the stack and headed out the door.
    “Let’s get it full, all right?” Beth called from the doorway.
    “You got it!” I hollered as I jumped back into the car where Shadow was waiting, his tongue hanging out.
    He’s the funniest dog sometimes, the way he’ll jump into the passenger seat and act like a human, waiting to be driven somewhere. Without Shadow, I never would have been able to do Hollywood. I would have been too lonely. Because of him and his dog mutt-face, I’d met friends, men, and had somebody to do things with 24/7. In fact, in LA everybody must feel the same way, because there are so many dogs.
    I zipped back to my Los Feliz studio apartment and laughed. I had thought “yes” was about moving, not about being suddenly single for 24 hours. I plopped down on my cozy Ikea futon couch. FYI, I always have a spare bed to offer—not that futons are the most comfortable, but when in need, it’s there. I put the photo stack in front of me, all color, glossy; gone were the days of black-and-white 8x10’s (headshots) that I started out with. Every actor puts a cell phone number on the resume, if his agent isn’t ‘A-list’. I mean, we’re all dying to get that one call where Martin Scorsese, or Quentin Tarantino, or Spike Lee, or Kathryn Bigelow, or the next up-and-coming director says, “Hey, I want to cast you in my motion picture.” So, in other words, I was phoning every desperate, wanna-make-it-in-Hollywood actor. I picked up the first photo: cute guy, crew cut, ‘army-type’. Think, Zero Dark Thirty . He also had powerful dark brown eyes and yummy lips.
    I phoned him. “Yeah?” he asked and I rattled off my super, practiced ‘reality TV’ phone pitch about how this top reality casting director was giving actors the chance to be seen and make money. I added that, after a stint on the hottest reality show on network, he’d be a shoe-in for movie and TV parts. And then I waited, while he cackled loudly.
    “So, can you come tonight?” I asked.
    “I cum all the time; which picture you got in front of you?” he asked, like only a good-looking, cocky actor can do.
    “I don’t. I have your name and cell phone number on a sheet with forty others,” I lied, because technically I didn’t want to say some casting director had dumped his 8x10 along with a thousand others into a reject pile—and that I was recycling it.
    “Oh, I’m wearing the grey t-shirt. I can hear it in your voice. Right?” he asked, doubly cocky, probably with a hard-on or with his well-hung cock in his hands.
    “Listen, I don’t have your acting photo,” I said, a bit pissed off, but only a little bit.
    “You’re East Coast born and raised; you’re an actress, probably the dramatic kind; you think I’m cute, but maybe stuck up, but you’d be open to meeting me,” he said.
    “Yes,” I said, because no is for negative, angry, bitter women, which I vowed not to be. Yes, because things like this never happen. I swear I had used a ‘business type’ voice, and still, he had read my flirty, provocative mind. Oh, well!
    “Good, I bet you’re something,” he said, in a really commanding voice that made me gulp. Gulp.
    “FYI, the grey shirt,” I added.
    And that’s how it happened. We