“Yes?”
“TBA,” I winked at her. “Nothing like a little secrecy, huh?”
“The first auditions aren’t scheduled for another hour. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.”
“I know, but we really need to do ours early, it’s a matter of life or death.”
The corners of her eyes crinkled as she rested her chin on her hand and looked at me. “Is that right?”
Oh, I am a sucker for green eyes. I said, “By the way, what’s your name?”
“Colleen, what’s yours?”
“I’m Ronny Baca, and this is my comical sidekick Hondo Wells. Most of us call him Gabby Wells, like Gabby Hayes from the old cowboy movies.”
She laughed and leaned back, glancing down at a paper on the desk as she looked from it to us. She said, “I don’t see your names here.” Colleen turned those green eyes on Hondo and said, “So, Mr. Wells how are you? I recognized you from the news last week. All you needed for that rescue was a cape and a big S on your chest to let people know who you were.”
Hondo gave her a smile and said, “I always leave that stuff at home when I go fishing. All I had on were shorts.”
“Oh, I know.” She smiled back.
Colleen studied the paper for a long second, then said, “Okay you two, I’m not supposed to do this, but I’m going to add your names and let you audition. But don’t tell anyone.”
“Our lips are sealed,” I said and held up my fingers in the Boy Scout promise.
**
Colleen went through the door and came back in less than a minute. She gave us three pages of sides and said, “Ronny, you’re up.”
“Don’t we get a few minutes to look it over?”
“If you actually had an appointment we’d give you a few minutes, but since you’re pretty much crashing the audition, then no. Good luck.”
I opened the door and went in. The Le Montrose Meeting Room is impressive. A red carpet runs down the center of a room of ornate wooden chairs and passes between two red velvet curtains tied with gold cord. On the back wall is a black sign with “Le Montrose” angled across it in twenties style calligraphy. In front of the sign was a long desk where four busy people sat. Two others adjusted a camera positioned at the right side of the desk.
I saw my mark and stopped on it.
One person, who was shuffling papers back and forth like a Las Vegas card shark said, “So you’re an add-on, that right?”
“Yes sir.”
He looked up, “We all know you crashed the audition, so let’s get that out of the way first. We’ll let you slide this time, but don’t ever try it again on me. Understood?”
“Yes sir.”
“Okay. I’m David Gleason. Let’s hear your slate, then you’ll be reading with Vince here.” He pointed at the man to his right.
I did my slate and read with Vince, w
ho really gave some emotion to the lines. When we finished, David said, “Thank you.”
I didn’t leave. He looked at me, “What?”
“Could I do it again? I think I can do better.”
David looked at the others, then back at me. “You’ve got some balls, I’ll give you that. Let’s do it again.” So we did, and I sucked worse that time than the first.
CHAPTER 3