Yet I didn’t, and haven’t.
And likely won’t.
I don’t even notice the rehearsal room door open when the voice catches me mid-thought. “Desdemona Lebeau,” it speaks softly, its source being a girl with electric blue hair and a nose ring, one of the director’s assistants. “We’re ready for you.”
Inside, a table’s been erected at the far end of the room, at which four visibly coldhearted individuals who have each had a worse day than the other sit patiently awaiting my audition. Not one of them smiles. The only one of the four I recognize is my acting professor, Nina Parisi, a needle-eyed, cold-faced bone of a woman whose caramel skin sags at the eyes as if she hasn’t slept in sixty-six years.
“Hello,” I say when I take my place before them. I don’t know how close to stand, so I measure myself at roughly thirty feet away, which still feels too close. “I’m D-Desdemona Lebeau, and I’ll be acting in a … Sorry, no. I’m performing one verse of an original song called ‘A Palace of Stone’ … as well as a dramedy—er, dramatic piece from D-D-Damien Rigby’s Quieter The Scream.”
Then, with all due emotion, I perform.
“How’d it go??” Victoria begs me the moment I’m out of the door.
I’ve returned to the lobby filled with the others who have either gone already or still anxiously wait, practicing their audition pieces to the walls or the stairs or each other. There’s a peculiar comfort in watching them go at it while knowing that my own audition is over with and I’m no longer enduring the anxiety that is so visible on their faces and in their wringing hands.
“It went okay, I guess.”
“Just okay?” She frowns on my behalf. “It’s alright. Nerves get the best of us. Maybe spring auditions will be better for you.”
I smile. “And yours?”
“Perfectly!”
Her face bursts with ecstasy. It’s like she’s been dying to express how perfectly her audition went for the past hour. And she does just that, detailing to me every little nuance she discovered, even in the tiny sixty second opportunity we’re given in front of them.
“Oh, Des, you should come with us!” she exclaims suddenly. “We’re all hitting up the Throng & Song after this.”
I squint at her. “Whose thong?”
“Throng. Come with us! It’s the Theatre hangout.”
Considering it’s Friday and, now that the audition is over with, I just have a weekend full of freedom ahead of me, I tag along with Victoria, Eric, and Chloe on a trip across campus, down a street, and into a piano bar slash diner called, as previously warned, the Throng & Song. The inside is shockingly crowded with college-aged kids, most of whom I’d assume are not old enough to drink. Baskets of fries and wings adorn every table and a thin veil of smoke hovers in the air.
We claim a table near a very small circular stage, upon which stands the most rundown upright piano I’ve ever seen, and a stool where a guitarist strums and sings unheard in the thick clamor of the room. Victoria is telling me something about her audition and I’m just smiling and nodding, unable to hear a word of it even sitting across the table from her. We haven’t been in here for two minutes and I already feel drowsy from the noise and smoke.
A waitress comes by and asks each of us if we want something from the bar. To be heard, she leans in so close she could kiss each of us. Her words tickle my ear, and I wince and answer, “Vodka tonic, please.”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but as the day turns to night, the noise grows even louder. It is so deafening in here that I feel pressure against every wall of my skull, as if it’s being invaded by an army of sound and every cell in my body works to defend my cranium castle, resisting the swarm. I clutch my head at one point, convinced that my brain is being rattled inside by the noise.
After three vodka tonics and a round (or was it two?) of tequila shots that the others insisted we do, the noise doesn’t bother me at all.
“Oh my god, y’all,” Victoria slurs, giggling as she leans into me. We’ve all traded positions over the past hour and now she’s nearly sitting in my lap. “I’m gonna need another one of whatever the fuck that was. That shit was goooooood.” Eric shouts the name across the table. “Huh?” Eric shouts it again. “What?”
The guitarist finishes his song, and the half of the bar who are actually paying attention applaud noisily, a chorus of hooting and whistling cutting through the room. “Thank you, thank you,” the musician says with a wave of his hand. “I’m taking a ten, then I’ll be back. Peace.”