Dream Junkies
by Anne-Marie Yerks
Publication date: August 8th 2016
Genres: Adult, Contemporary
by Anne-Marie Yerks
Publication date: August 8th 2016
Genres: Adult, Contemporary
because the hardest part to play is yourself
BLURB
Actresses in a Chicago comedy
troupe, Daphne Corbett and Kristin Brewer share a stage as Jean and Jeanette, a
pair of dim-witted legal secretaries upstaging the show’s headliners. When
their performance attracts an ambitious entertainment agent from Manhattan, the
girls move to New York with hopes of stardom and success. But the search for
apartments and showbiz jobs takes them in different directions.
The shared journey leads them to
understand that dreams are worth only as much as the struggle to achieve them
and that the hardest part to play is yourself.
The Last
Night
The
Saturday before she left for New York, Daphne Corbett wrote her ex-boyfriend’s
address on a Post-it note and boarded the Pink Line train to West Pilsen. From
the CTA station, she walked down 18th Street to find the house where Alec was
living with his new band, Saturn Box.
It was a sunny morning in late July and most of the shops hadn’t
yet opened. At a corner liquor store, a group of men and a big dog were
gathered around a cement stoop. A taxi cab pulled up and the driver tried to
wave her over, but she shook her head and kept on going.
“Hey Miss,” one of the men called, blowing smoke from one side of
his mouth, “can I ask you a question?”
Daphne ignored him and held her purse a little closer. This was
the kind of neighborhood Alec liked because the big houses could be rented for
cheap. Everyone could have a bedroom with plenty of the house left over for
practice space and a common living area. Alex wasn’t onto mind the shabby
people on the streets or the long trek downtown. He’d told her that he wasn’t
home much anyway because his band was taking off.
She referred to the Post-it to locate the side street and turned.
The house was halfway down the block, easy to find because of the spray-painted
Saturn symbol on the side. Alec’s green Volvo station wagon was parked at the
curb, loaded up with speakers and amps. Daphne remembered all the work they’d
gone through finding the equipment at consignment shops and thrift stores. They’d
had fun doing that.
A girl answered the door, a very thin girl with dishwater blonde
hair and pierced eyebrows, wearing a greyish t-shirt. It had to be Lorene, the
back-up singer. Alec had mentioned something about her the last time they’d
talked.
“Is Alec here?” The girl assessed Daphne’s flowered skirt and
white sandals with watery blue eyes.
“I think so.” Lorene stood aside and motioned toward the
staircase. In one of the upstairs rooms, Daphne found Alec and his guitar in an
upstairs room, stretched out on a ratty orange couch, writing in the
composition book spread in his lap. It was the same composition book he’d used
for song lyrics ever since she’d met him. His handwriting was so small it would
take him a month to fill a page, so small that he probably could use that one
notebook the rest of his life. Alec’s soul was in that book, she knew. It was
in there even more than in his music.
“What brings you out here?” He sat up to make space on the couch,
and she sat down. The curtains hanging in the window behind them were a pair
that Daphne had brought when they used to live together in Wicker Park. In
those days, they had struggled to survive on their tiny paychecks and a good
yard sale find was gold.
She took a breath. “I’m moving to New York. On Monday.” Alec lit a
cigarette and took a drag, eyes focused across the room at some equipment
arranged in a semi-circle: a sheet music stand, a sax, and a keyboard. He
smoothed his bangs. “What for?” Daphne told him about the agent who’d come to
the comedy club and the audition for the sitcom. She gave all the details, the
things that had happened over the past six months, more than what was necessary
because she knew he would listen, that he still cared in a way that other
people didn’t.
“So, you think this agent is for real?”
This was what everyone wanted to know. Her mother had asked the
same question. Are you sure this is the real thing,
Daphne? I mean, it’s a big deal to pack up your whole life and move away . . .
“Pavia is definitely for real.” “Did you sign a contract?” “Sort
of,” she told him. “Just for representation. Kristin has a role on the show,
but I don’t.
Not yet. I’m going to do some modeling until they call me in.”
“What’s this sitcom called?” Alec took another puff and then crushed the cigarette
into the ashtray. “Streethearts. It’s about Chicago even though it’s filmed in
New York. The idea is that the people who work in the little shops on the
street get to know each other and fall in love and have affairs and
misunderstandings. Typical kind of thing.” She didn’t tell him how much she had
wanted to be on the show and how disappointed she was with the second-string
position. But he probably knew.
“What about your sculpture? I thought you were going to set up a
workshop someday.”
When she first began college, she had pictured herself alone in an
art studio, digging her hands in the clay and wood-firing her work in an open
field. But even after five years of classes and a senior show, she’d yet to
sell a single piece. The fact there were galleries everywhere— even little ones
that would take a chance on someone new—was another reason she was going to New
York. She couldn’t take all the sculptures with her—there wasn’t enough
space—but she had a nice set of slides that her new step-father and her mother
had financed as a graduation gift.
“I’m not giving up on the idea, but I don’t know where it can go.
The art world is so artificial. The money goes to the wrong place.” She was
fighting the tired trend, the urban refuge type thing done a million times over
that everyone couldn’t seem to get enough of: Virgin Mary statuettes glued onto
banged up car doors, iron fencing worked into sex positions, bottles filled
with plastic fruit floating in tea.
“You think acting isn’t artificial?” he asked. “Just take a look
at the posters downtown, Daph. It’s the most artificial world there is. It will
suck everything pure out of you and spit it back out in plastic.”
“Rock and roll is artificial, too,” she pointed out. “Those
guitars you smash onstage are from the Salvation Army.”
“Come on, get real. You don’t even have a job in New York. Sorry
to tell you this, but dreams aren’t edible. And they don’t pay bills. At least
you have a job here, something a lot of people would like to do. And it makes
people laugh. Why give it up for nothing?”
She didn’t tell that she had already given it up. She and Kristin
had quit Side Stitches the week before. Downstairs, a dog
began to bark. Then another dog. Then another.
“Lorene has three mutts,” Alec said. He stood up and tucked the
cigarette pack into the pocket of his flannel shirt. “She feeds them on the top
of the kitchen table. Supposedly it’s demoralizing for them to eat from bowls
on the floor. If I don’t get down there, she’ll give them my leftover
meatloaf.”
They walked downstairs and stopped at the doorway. The sun was
dancing over the tops of the cars in the streets. The flowers in the beds were
pale and tired, burning into August.
“Send me a postcard,” he said. “From Manhattan?” she asked. “I
don’t know. From anywhere. Surprise me. I’ll send you one too.” When they said
goodbye at the front door, she caught a look in his eye, one that had never
been directed at her before. Envy. But that was normal, she thought, walking
north to the bus stop. Most people would be a little envious of someone whose
career is about to take off. She tossed the Post-it note into the trash at the
Metra stop. As the train pulled away, she could somehow still see the note
through the grate—a bright little square of neon orange that seemed to be
saying Stop.
At home on Sunday, Daphne listed the things left to do. Most of
the furniture would stay where it was. The new tenant, an incoming grad student
at DePaul, had bought the couch, chairs, and dining set for a few hundred
bucks. Her mattress would go to the curb. The floors needed a good sweep and
the baseboards should be washed. The refrigerator was frightening. And she
should find the smoke detector and hang it up in the hallway again. She’d
removed it months ago because it kept going off when she dried her hair.
Everything was packed into boxes except for her sculptures. In the
morning, she would cover them with plastic and use the blankets in the rental
van as cushioning. For now they lined the wall in front of a window, their
angled shadows stretched across the wood floor. This would be their final hours
in the light for quite a while, Daphne thought, running a hand over her
favorite—a piece she called “Panda.” It was her simplest work— a tall smooth
cylinder with a fist print in the middle—and most recent (she had brought it
home the week before). The only exhibition it’d get would be in the living room
unless she could find a way to include it in the things she took to New York.
She wondered if Kristin would be a picky roommate, or if she would be too busy
to care.
The mail had brought a birthday card from her mother with a check
tucked inside.
Sorry I can’t be with you! The honeymoon is wonderful! Be careful.
Love, Mom.
The envelope was postmarked and stamped from Jamaica with her mother’s
new name in the upper left-hand corner: Elizabeth Peepers. She’d just married a
man named Al Peepers on a cruise ship.
Daphne folded the check into her wallet. After tonight, when she
unloaded the kilns for the last time, she would be unemployed. Money would be
tight for a while, she knew. Apartments in New York were beyond expensive. The
first time she’d skimmed the classifieds in The Village Voice she thought it would be impossible to
pay such prices. Pavia was the one who suggested that she and Kristin share for
a while. That way all expenses were cut in half. Daphne was all for the idea,
but she sensed that Kristin wasn’t completely sold. Then again, she hadn’t said
“no” to it either.
Daphne called Kristen to make sure everything was set. “I’m not
even close to ready,” Kristin said. “Are you?” “I’m packed, but I’ve got to get
rid of some dirt and grime if I want my rent deposit back.”
Daphne considered the filth on the baseboards as Kristin went on.
“How much room will we have? I don’t think I can fit all my stuff
into a car. Should we rent a van or something?”
“I thought you were getting us a van.” “I thought you were getting
it.”
It was typical Kristin to forget something important like this, to
assume that it would all fall into place without any effort on her part.
Probably everything in her life had gone that way, Daphne thought. She had been
spoiled by good looks, the perfect complexion, and long blonde waves—angelic
features that contrasted with her on-the-brink sexuality. Everywhere she went people
looked at her. Her boyfriends were the gullible, earnest types who fell into an
obsessive love that drove them to seek her out twenty-four seven. Sometimes
they appeared backstage after the show, eyes overloaded with longing and a kind
of resignation beneath the yearning. They all knew that Kristin Brewer would
cast them out with time, that they were mice in the claws of a cat who would
play until the plaything became boring, then hunt for a new one. Maybe they
didn’t, but they should have.
Daphne found a number for U-Haul.
Yes, Kristin could drive men crazy. She was much better at
collecting suitors than she was at being an actress. Daphne was the one who had
carried their show technically. Her minor at DePaul had been theatre arts and
she considered herself professionally trained.
When she had auditioned for Side Stitches, a comedy
troupe that performed in a popular downtown club, she’d beat out dozens of
other girls for a spot. Kristin, who had come out of nowhere, was given the
other role. Together, they created a blonde and brunette duo called Jane and
Janette, the silly secretaries whose incompetence with calendar software was
the chagrin of their stuffy executive bosses. It was one of the troupe’s most
successful ongoing skits and it got their faces featured on color posters and
TV ads even if it didn’t make much money. This was how Pavia found them.
In the beginning, Pavia seemed like a sweet lady who demanded
respect in the same way a schoolteacher might. She was tiny, only a little over
five feet, with tight spiral curls that made her look like a Raggedy Anne.
Daphne would have described her as “cute” on first impression, but then she
began to take note of the points and angles in the woman’s face, the way she
clenched her teeth when she was even slightly impatient, the way her dark eyes
would whip and judge and assign anything in sight to a proper caste.
But she could be warm and friendly, too.
“I think you girls have more talent than you realize,” she’d said
to Daphne and Kristin that first night. And it was only a few days later that
she’d given them both representation contracts and sent them to an audition for
a network television pilot called Streethearts. The leading
female role, a florist named Erica, was up for grabs.
“Now, both of you have a shot at this,” Pavia had said, leading
them into the studio the day of the audition, her heels clicking on the tile.
“The producers haven’t decided on a blonde or a brunette,” she paused and
turned to them, her hand on the doorknob, “but they definitely want an emerging
actress from Chicago. Make the most of that Midwestern drawl, the long O’s and
A’s . . . don’t be ashamed of who you are.”
Daphne was a native of the Chicago area but had trained her accent
away during drama school at DePaul. Kristin, who was from some small town in
Wisconsin and had never taken acting lessons, had retained a farm girl nasal
twang. When Daphne sat under the lights with the script and began reading the
lines labeled ERICA, she was overly aware of the long O and A sounds and her
accent sounded artificial. The casting people watched politely. They asked her
a few questions and then told her she could leave. Pavia called later with the
news that Kristin had won the role. “But it’s not all bad,” she’d said to
Daphne. “The producers actually liked you. They don’t think you’re right for
Erica, but they might have a role if the show takes off the way they hope it
will. Just come with us to New York. We’ll find something for you.”
Daphne had wanted to kick herself. How could she have flubbed the
audition? Why had Pavia screwed her up by mentioning accents right before she
went in? Or was it Kristin’s big boobs? That’s what they cared about, of
course. And being blonde.
“Think about it,” Pavia said. “You won’t be able to do the comedy
show with Kristin gone anyway.”
“They could find a replacement, ” Daphne said flatly. “It wouldn’t
be the same.” Pavia was right. There was a certain magic that made people laugh
and it didn’t grow on trees. Besides, what if a replacement actress upstaged
her or tried to take over? “OK,” she said. “I’ll go.” Then began the flurry of
to-do lists, packing, job-quitting, and the good-bye party for Side
Stitches. The plan was that Pavia would drive them to Manhattan and
they could stay in her neighbor’s sublet for exactly one week until they found
their own place. Kristin signed up for the Actor’s Guild, and Daphne was
ordered to put together a modeling portfolio. She didn’t have any pictures,
though, so Pavia hired a photographer. Daphne had spent an afternoon and
evening with him doing things like meditating on a park bench, standing on a
train track, and leaning against a graffiti-splattered wall. A set of shots
arrived in the mail the next week. Daphne thought they looked good, but Pavia
said only that they were “passable.”
In the kitchen, Daphne took on her last task in Chicago, cleaning
the refrigerator. For this chore she played her Les
Miserables soundtrack
and sang along, imagining the glory of Broadway lights. Soon she’d be in New
York living alongside some of the most famous, rich, and talented people in the
world. The future stretched out a long and lavish pathway brimming with unnamed
experience.
If only there wasn’t this nagging feeling, this sense that all
wasn’t as she wanted it to be.
She glimpsed at her reflection in the window as she rinsed a mound
of moldy chicken salad from a bowl. Maybe she wasn’t a glittery blonde, but she
was tall and slender with shiny chestnut hair and a pretty face. She had a
brilliant smile, a college degree, and a great sense of humor. And she was
dedicated to her dream in a way Kristin could never even begin to understand.
Dragging the trash out to the alley, she took a mental snapshot of the back
porch of the apartment where she lived, the noble oak that shaded the porch,
the busy road out front. Back inside, she lowered herself onto the couch that
was no longer hers and closed her eyes. She assured herself that, with time,
the nagging feeling would go away.
Her cat Mario snuggled into the crook of her knee, and that was
how they both fell asleep their last night in Chicago.
Anne-Marie Yerks is a fiction
writer, essayist and journalist from the Metropolitan Detroit area. Her essays
have appeared in the online editions of "Good Housekeeping,"
"marie claire," "Country Living" and "Redbook."
She has work forthcoming in "Modern Memoir" (Fiction Attic Press) and
in "Recipes With A Story" (Blue Lobster Books). Her novel, Dream
Junkies, will be published in 2016 by New Rivers Press. Find her on Twitter
@amy1620.
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