ONE
Riley shifted in the hard, plastic-backed chair and glanced around the crowded room. She guessed that there were maybe forty other women in there, all of them waiting their turn, their faces twisting into a variety of expressions as they quietly went through their prepared readings, reacting to imaginary partners. She took a deep breath and checked the time on her phone; the runners had called in almost a dozen women so far, and even as she sat, waiting for her turn to read, she saw more actresses filing into the waiting room in ones and twos.
She glanced down at the pages on her lap and pressed her lips together, doing a little mental rehearsing herself. The open call was one of the biggest things going on in the city that week, and while Riley didn’t have much information about the project, the word from her agent was that they were looking for a few beautiful starlets to round out the cast of a mid-level film. It was exactly the sort of audition that Riley had been to a dozen times or more—but unlike when she’d first arrived in LA, she no longer truly believed she stood a chance of standing out.
“When did you get in?”
Riley looked up and turned her head in the direction of the voice that had cut through her thoughts. The girl seated next to her was not quite as tall as Riley, and dressed in a cool, clean sundress, her blonde hair pulled back from her face. Riley smiled. Never any sense in being a bitch to anyone—besides, she’s just being friendly.
“About an hour and a half ago,” Riley replied. “You?”
“I got here early,” the woman said, her delicate features twisting into a grimace. “Fat lot of good it’s done me.”
“Hey—you’ll still probably get to go in a good thirty minutes or more before me; there’s that at least.”
Riley kept the smile on her face but she couldn’t help running through the mental math: it was Friday afternoon, and she had the dinner shift at the restaurant to get to after the audition. Even assuming that she got in to see the casting directors in a reasonable time frame, she would have to rush home to change into her uniform if she wanted to make it on time. Bigger things, Ri. If you get the part, you won’t have to worry about waiting tables for a while.
“What do you suppose the odds are for any of us actually getting the part?” the blonde asked jokingly.
Riley chuckled, looking around at the sea of faces in the room. It was so crowded that the latest arrivals were just taking up positions on the floor, carefully spreading sweaters or whatever else they had in their bags to keep their clothes from getting dirty.
“I heard that there are casting calls going on through the weekend,” Riley said, shrugging again. “So this times at least three—probably not great.”
She took a quick, breath, reminding herself that someone always eventually won the lottery. If you go to enough auditions, you’re bound to get a job. It was a theory that had—so far—steered her mostly well; she’d arrived in the city with a blank CV and bargain-basement headshots from a photography studio in Vegas, and while she still had to hold onto her “day” job to make sure her bills got paid, Riley now had ten or more credits to her name, even if they were minor commercial spots or bit TV parts.
“I heard that they’re not just casting for the main female lead,” another girl commented from Riley’s other side. Riley turned to look at her; she was a petite brunette, with luminous green eyes, and cream-colored skin. She looked to Riley almost like a reinvented Audrey Hepburn. “There are a bunch of bit parts up for grabs, too.”
“My agent told me it’s a mid-level film—one of those between-blockbusters numbers, something to pay the bills for the production company,” Riley said. “There probably aren’t a huge amount of parts going.” She paused, deciding that that sounded a little too negative. “But it could be a really great chance to get something substantial!”
“I’m getting tired of playing the clueless housewife,” the blonde next to her said, shaking her head and sighing. “Something like this would be great, if I could just get it.”
“I know the feeling,” Riley said, sighing. She looked down at the pages on her lap and then back at the blonde. “Good luck, right?”
“Same to you,” the blonde said, smiling politely.
Riley read through the script once more, trying out the lines in her mind. She had never been one for rehearsing out loud in public; she didn’t like to give her competition any ideas, or give them any kind of edge on her performance. As soon as her agent had told her about the open call, she’d found the audition script online and printed it, taking precious time out of her sleep schedule to practice in the tiny bedroom of her tiny apartment. She thought—she hoped—that she had the part more or less memorized; that would at least give her something of an edge on the women who’d come in off the street and grabbed their copies of the script from the basket in the lobby.
Riley read through the part several more times, imaging the lines as she hoped to deliver them. Every time the door to the next room opened, she looked up; one of the frazzled assistants would call a name, and another one of the women would jump up and dart into the room, clutching their scripts tightly in their hands. Riley changed seats as more and more of the aspiring actresses went up, making her way closer to the door as the auditions progressed. She put her bag down in her chair once or twice to grab a bottle of water or to use the restroom, but otherwise she remained in her seat, making polite small talk when the occasion arose, and reviewing the script as many times as she could.
She tried not to watch the time too much; Riley knew that there were plenty of open casting calls where the producers tucked a few moles into the waiting rooms to report on how different prospective actors behaved when they weren’t being watched by anyone obviously in charge. It wouldn’t do to ruin her chances by being rude to anyone, or seeming impatient. Like many of the women in the room, Riley had planned ahead for a long wait; on her way out that morning, she’d packed a quick and unobtrusive lunch: salad greens with a tiny Tupperware container of oil and vinegar, a piece of chicken breast seasoned with nothing more than salt and pepper, and a little bit of brown rice. A growling stomach or low blood sugar would doom her—but so would garlic breath or reeking of spices.
Each of the auditioning actresses was supposed to have a five-minute slot, but as the afternoon dragged on, Riley realized that it wouldn’t be possible for the casting team to see all of the applicants that had come in if they kept to five minutes with each; even after they closed the sign-in station in the lobby and ushered the last of the prospects into the waiting room, Riley thought that the production crew looked frazzled at the high number of people waiting for their turn. She wasn’t about to add to their stress by being unmanageable, but she hoped that she might be one of the last ones to get a five-minute chance in the actual audition room.
“Riley Townsend!”
Riley nearly leapt from her seat at the sound of her name. She got up and strode towards the door leading from the waiting room to the audition room, smiling politely at the woman who called her name. After hours of running back and forth, the black-garbed assistant looked blotchy, flushed, and agitated, her hair starting to frizz and her eyes wide with anxiety.
“Right here,” Riley said.