Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [71]
“I’m happy to,” she said. It was rare that she spoke dishonestly. She wondered if she looked as diminished as Brian did.
Carmen was standing in the Vera Wang boutique attempting to buy the most expensive wedding dress in New York City when she heard the special ring tone of her agent, Lynn. “Hi, Lynn.”
“Sweetie! I’ve got an unbelievable piece of news. Grantley Arden is casting for his Katrina opus and he wants to meet with you. They’ve already set up the production office in New Orleans. He wants you to go down there and talk to him and a couple of the producers. They’ve already got Matt Damon committed.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No.”
“When?”
“They want to meet next month on the twenty-eighth. That gives you some time. But I think you should go a few days early and get a feel for the place. Have you been?”
“No.”
“Well, you need to go. Listen to the accents, walk around, eat some food, absorb everything you can. It’s a film about the city. You really need to take it in. That’s what Grant kept telling me. I’ll email you the script as soon as I get it.”
“I’m working until March twenty-fourth.”
“So leave as soon as you finish. And plan to stay an extra week in case they want to get you on film or have you meet the studio people. I don’t want you coming home without an offer.”
When Carmen hung up, her heart was pounding. The saleslady wheeled in a rack of dresses, but Carmen couldn’t look at them. How could she think about wedding dresses at a time like this?
Carmen thanked the saleslady and apologized and walked out to the street. She walked up and down Madison Avenue calling every member of her team, and then she called Jones.
“I’m blown away,” he said. “Do you know anything about the part?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Carmen, this is big. This could be the biggest thing you’ve ever done by far.” She had to hold the phone away from her ear because he was shouting.
“I know.” After Jones she called her mom.
“Is it like, an audition?” her mom asked.
“They want to meet me,” Carmen said impatiently. “You aren’t really expected to audition at my level,” she heard herself adding somewhat haughtily. She realized she sounded like Jones when she said it.
“Oh. Right.” Her mother was on her heels, which was a place Carmen was constantly trying to put her but never wanted her to be once she was there.
Carmen relented. “But it’s basically like an audition.”
“Are they meeting with other people for the part?” her mom asked, which Carmen interpreted to mean “You haven’t really got anything worth bragging about yet, have you?”
When she hung up with her mother she considered calling her father but decided not to. Unlike her mother, her dad would assume she had the part won and the contracts signed. He would probably go around telling people she’d landed the starring role. So it went, when you were an idea.
Carmen felt hollow and unsatisfied as she walked downtown. She felt like she’d just left a three-star restaurant with no food in her stomach. Her fingers ached to make a few more calls. But she couldn’t call Bee. She couldn’t call Lena, and God knew she couldn’t call Tibby. How fast her sweet wine turned to vinegar.
It was that old feeling: if she hadn’t told the Septembers yet, it hadn’t really happened. She thought of her alleged wedding, her robotic efforts to push it forward. Her life as it unspooled without her friends was no life at all.
Lena wore brown and put the red dress in her carry-on bag. She worked up her courage through seven hours in the air, such that after the plane landed at Heathrow she marched directly to the women’s restroom. She wriggled out of her sweater, T-shirt, and pants. The stall was tiny, of course, and she kept whacking her elbow into the metal wall.
“Hello?” came a voice from the next stall over.
“Nothing. Sorry,” Lena said, half undressed and fully discombobulated.
The red dress was hitched up on one side and twisted when she came out of the stall. In the mirror she saw that her hair was sticking up in back. There were dark circles