I'm Glad About You(17)
“Were you there?” Marnie asked.
“I wasn’t there, I’m just telling you what she told me. It was not a good thing.”
“People laughed,” Alison said, trying to defend herself from, what she wasn’t entirely sure.
“The crew laughed,” Lisa reminded her. It was sounding as if Lisa had been there, when in fact she had just hung on the phone, disbelieving, while Alison gave her a blow-by-blow of the day, which had gone well—just as the other three days of shooting had gone well.
“I like crews, they’re the nicest people on those sets,” Marnie observed.
“They’re not the ones who are going to be deciding if they should hire you back,” Lisa argued.
“Nobody does that anyway; once you’ve done a guest spot they don’t bring you back ever, or if they do it’s not for four or five years.” Marnie was like a wayward pit bull in this debate. Alison wished they would both shut up, as the scene was rolling by, unwatched now, on the television set. The rest of the gang was getting impatient with the debate as well. Several people started to shush the speakers and then someone called out, “Back it up, I want to see her tell the DA he’s hostile again. It’s the best moment in the whole show.” Alison glanced behind her to find out who it was requesting an encore of her moment of rebellion and saw that it was Seth, the smug writer who had been snotty about her grammar and her undergraduate education in this very loft, not three months ago. He was squeezed into a corner with his back against the headboard and his long legs dangling off the edge, propping himself up at an awkward angle as he slugged back a bottle of beer. He seemed sincerely amused by all of it. “Back it up, back it up,” he insisted. “Who has the clicker?”
While several people went diving into the pillows and blankets, Seth caught Alison’s glance and raised his beer and an eyebrow at her, not smiling, but impressed. Alison turned to get back to the television set and simultaneously grab whatever refill was being offered, which seemed to be a cheapish sort of half-decent pink wine from Argentina. Lisa had informed her not a week ago that she was happy things had never heated up between Alison and Seth because it seemed that this young paragon was now interested in Lisa herself. Lisa and Seth had gone out for drinks after bumping into each other at a screening; one thing led to another, bodily fluids had been exchanged, and Lisa decided that Seth and all his East Coast promise were not meant for Alison after all.
Under which circumstances Alison was not particularly interested in renewing an edgy flirtation with the guy. It was clear that he was now somewhat more impressed with her dubious credentials as an actress and he was still, as she recalled from her first meeting, pretty cute. But the fact that he seemed to have changed his opinion of her because she was on television just annoyed the shit out of Alison. She was beneath his notice three months ago when she was a would-be actress who had gone to Notre Dame, but now he was interested because she had a guest lead on a mediocre cop show? And this was what passed for intelligence and sophistication in the Big Apple?
As soon as the thought flew by—mediocre cop show—Alison felt some part of her surge up with pride and defiance. It wasn’t mediocre, she told herself; it was crime drama, a time-honored form, and all these people who she barely knew had gathered at Lisa’s invitation to watch it. Two years ago, in Seattle, she and her little band of passionate theater friends spent a lot of time making fun of mediocre cop shows, but for an actress in New York, someone who was actually taking a shot at it, someone who was going to try to make it happen, these shows were bread and butter, and besides, some of the best actors in the country were doing them. The actor playing the surly DA was a huge film and theater star, who happened to work regularly in television as well. There was no selling out involved in this experience. This was a major step up the ladder.
And the part, which had been only two lines when she went in to read for it, turned out to be quite a juicy little nugget of a role. The thing just kept growing. Within a day, there were two extra scenes sent to her Gmail, and by the end of the week there were three more. Each came with a brief notification attached, that all scenes were subject to change, and her new agent, Ryan Jones, warned her numerous times that it was great that the part was growing, but it could shrink just as easily. But it didn’t shrink. The witness was given her own name—Elizabeth Garrity—and a backstory: She was dating one of the friends of the killer, who had some sort of “he’s my buddy” pact with the guy that was more important to him than anything in the world. There was even a great scene added in which she accused her nasty boyfriend, in front of witnesses, of being in love with the killer. Then he tried to slug her and strangle her, and the cops in the room had to jump him and drag him off. That bit necessitated a fight choreographer who for a couple of shots had the other actor throw her across the desk, but the director thought it was too much and declared firmly that he wasn’t going to use any of it.
The whole experience was a complete blast, on top of which they actually paid her. She had done a couple of scenes in an independent movie while living in Seattle, so she was already a member of SAG, which meant they had to pay her SAG minimums, eight hundred dollars for every day she was required to be on set. Because the new scenes got added so late, they got shoved into the schedule wherever they fit, which meant that Alison was required to be on the set on four separate days. Which broke down to four times seven hundred, twenty-eight hundred dollars for the whole gig, a figure she never would have gotten if they could have scheduled her scenes more tightly. Ryan wanted them to pay her even more—he tried briefly for the top-of-show rate, which was what anyone with a major guest part should have gotten. But everyone knew this was a huge break for Alison already and they weren’t going to go the extra mile for an actress who was such a total nobody. Ryan settled for the $2,800.