Fortune & Misfortune
Lisa Goldstein: Fortune and Misfortune First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, May 1997. Nominated for Best Short Story. —————————————— This is my story, but first I have to tell you about Jessie. Jessie and I met at an audition. My agent had told me they were looking for someone to play a contemporary high school kid so I dressed the part–torn baggy jeans, white T-shirt, red flannel shirt tied around my waist. I’d been waiting for about five minutes when Jessie walked in and gave her name to the receptionist. She wore one of those dress-for-success costumes that make women look like clowns–skirt and jacket of bright primary colors (hers were red), big buttons down the front, hugely padded shoulders. She looked at me and then down at herself and laughed and grimaced at the same time. It was an oddly endearing expression, the gesture of someone who knows how to poke fun at herself.
“You’re so clever,” she said. She glanced at her outfit again. “I’ve probably blown it already.” She looked as if she wanted to talk further, but just then the receptionist called her name. I felt annoyed–I’d been waiting longer than she had, though I knew that that had nothing to do with Hollywood’s pecking order. She was closeted with the casting people for about ten minutes. When she came out she looked at me, held her palms up and shrugged elaborately. Her gesture said, clearly as words, I have no idea whether I made it or not. I didn’t think about her until the next cattle call, when I saw her again. She was wearing the same clothes–I wondered if it was the only decent outfit she owned. I was reading a magazine, but she sat down next to me anyway. “Did you get called back for that high school thing?” she asked. “No,” I said. “Neither did I. I’m Jessie.” “I’m Pam.” The receptionist called my name then. I felt a rush of pleasure at being called first–this woman wasn’t all that far above me after all. “Listen,” she said as I stood up. “If I get called next, wait for me and we’ll go to lunch. I don’t know too many people in this town.”
“Okay,” I said.
She did get called next. I waited, and when she came out she offered to drive us to a coffee shop in Westwood.
I had already pegged her as someone very much like myself, just barely getting by on bit parts and commercials and waitressing jobs. So I was surprised to see her walk up to a white BMW and turn off the car alarm. She must have noticed my expression, because she laughed. “Oh, it’s not mine,” she said. “I rent it for casting calls. You have to play the game, make them think you’re worth it.”
I’d heard this before, of course. In an image-conscious town like Hollywood every little bit helps. A fancy car isn’t enough to land you a part, though, and I wondered if she had any acting ability to back it up.
I got in the car and she drove us to the restaurant. When we were seated she looked directly at me and said, “So. Where would I have seen you?”
I told her about my few commercials and the made-for-cable movie I’d done. “I was Iras in Antony and Cleopatra at the San Diego Shakespeare festival,” I said. “I was also the understudy for Rosalind in As You Like It, but the damned woman refused to get sick.”
She seemed a little puzzled at this. Wondering why I bothered with Shakespeare, maybe. “What about you?” I asked.
“I had a bit part on a soap,” she said. “It was a great gig, until they killed my character off.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and she laughed.
Los Angeles, they say, is where the best-looking boy and the prettiest girl from every high school in the country end up. You can’t sneeze in this town without infecting a former high school beauty queen or football quarterback. Even so, I thought this woman astonishingly beautiful. She had deep sea-blue eyes, dark lashes, and a mass of dark hair. More than that, though, she had some subtle arrangement of bone structure that compelled you to look at her. She might just make it, I thought, and felt the envy that had dogged me ever since I had come to town. Next to her all my faults stood out in sharp relief–I was too short, too plain, my mouth too thin. I hate myself when I feel this petty, I struggle against it, but I don’t seem to be able to help it.