The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [27]
I had assumed the readings to have started the week before. My strategy was to give them seven days grace to stew around in, and then, very over-the-shoulder, off-the-shoulder, daintily treading all over everybody’s toes, in I would waft, impress the hell out of them, and win the day. But when I got to the theater, it turned out, quite unexpectedly, to be empty. I finally managed to uncover one of those mysterious old women, who inhabit deserted buildings in France like mice, and who, under my relentless inquisition, was forced to confess, not only that it was a theater, but that it was going to open up soon for some company to begin its casting. Wrenching the exact day and time from her unwilling lips, I returned chez moi, carefully hung up my neutral clothes to preserve them, and held my breath for three days.
And so it came about, that, instead of drifting over to the theater in that casual off-handed manner planned, I was actually camping on its doorstep when Larry arrived. And a good thing too. The competition was fierce.
I won’t drag you through the quarter-finals, the semifinals and the finals. The only relevant question is, did I or didn’t I. And the answer, in a word, is Yes! In two words really, Yes, Yes! Because I read so brilliantly, not to say inspiredly, that I came out with two roles. In the first, the Saroyan one, a waif who sweeps out the jail, and in the second, the Williams one, a batty prostitute.
“We’ll get you a wig to wear for the first one,” said Larry, “but I want you to use your own hair, or whatever that stuff is you’ve got on the top of your head now, for the other, Pinkie.” Then he said, quite seriously, “You more than surprise me, screwball. I had no idea you were good.”
I could have died of happiness. I went back to Montparnasse and flung myself into a celebration which lasted two nights and from which it took me three days to recover.
The night before we went into rehearsal, I was determined to get to bed early. When I got into my bath, I was singing. Gradually, deliciously, I could feel myself relaxing. In a sudsy dream I floated off, unknitting, unknotting, unraveling. I was so sleepy I could hardly put my pajamas on and get into bed. I curled up into the pillows and was just dozing off when I noticed that the script that we were going to start off with was by the bedside table. I thought it might be a good idea to have one last look at it, making a few notes along the way if necessary. Five seconds later, I was crawling under the desk looking for my pencil. When I retrieved it, I saw that it was broken. I tried using my eyebrow pencil, but it was impossible to read my writing. I finally got a razor blade, sharpened the pencil, popped back into bed again, and recurled myself into the pillows. The script was opened, the pencil poised.
All at once I rolled over onto my side. For no reason at all, I was in the middle of a black depression. I turned off the lights and lay back in the darkness, tired but wide-awake, sleepy but unsleepy, too sleepy to read, not sleepy enough to sleep, my eyelids pinned back from my eyes, my spine rigid. I remained like this for I don’t know how long until I became aware of something else that was furthering my discomfort. I was beginning to be hungry. In no time at all, I was ravenous. Cursing myself for having forgotten to eat supper, I turned on the lights and looked at my clock. One o’clock in the morning. This made me at once more hungry and more tired. The hunger won. I rolled up my pajamas legs, pinning them with the safety pins I found on a skirt, put on my raincoat and went out.
At the corner of my street I could see the lights of the new nightclub that Shugie Jackson, the colored singer, had just opened. She was a friend of mine and I was