She donned her suit jacket and joined the other actresses in an area roped off for the cattle call. None of these women paid any attention to her. Each pair of heavily made-up eyes was glued to a line of script on the hand-out sheet. Stella looked down at her own sheet. One line, six words. How much study did that require?
She stood near the wall behind a potted fern, away from the press of other bodies, determined that no one would wrinkle her lucky suit or stain it. When her name was called, she entered the ballroom beyond the great doors and stood before a long dais decked with bottles and glassware, paperwork and food trays. On the other side of the linen tablecloth, the casting director and producer were seated in the company of assistants. Before Stella could even say her line, these men and women were all agog, eyes popping. She flashed them with her best smile. They were dazzled, riveted, stunned – though still awaiting her first word.
The actress felt a slick of something wet on her hand and looked down at a long thick line of blood seeping through the sleeve of her blazer. Inside the casing of linen, more blood was rolling down the skin of her arm and dripping off the tips of her fingers.
‘I hate it when this happens.’ Line delivered, though it was the wrong line, Stella Small closed her eyes in a dead faint, and the back of her head met the hardwood floor.
Green curtains formed three walls of the emergency-room cubicle, a thin layer of privacy for the young couple. Stella Small’s legs swung from the edge of the metal examination table, and the physician’s smile was shy as he treated her wounded arm.
The doctor’s head snapped to one side, suddenly distracted by a shadow looming close to the flimsy curtain. Though the silhouette was all wrong, Stella instantly recognized this scene from the movie Psycho. One shadow hand was on the rise, reaching higher, higher, and then – the green curtain was violently ripped to one side. And now the startled young doctor was staring at a stout woman with a pyramid of dark hair and a long black dress that flowed like a nun’s habit.
Stella had always suspected that her agent could smell fresh blood from great distances. Martha Sutton was a formidable woman, a drama queen extraordinaire and scarier than real nuns.
‘Nice entrance.’
‘Oh, Stella, Stella.’ The woman’s gleaming eyes appraised the lacerated arm and the bright red stains on her client’s clothing. ‘You look marvelous!' In agentspeak, this meant publicity worthy.
The young doctor turned back to his chore of irrigating a long thin wound. ‘I think we can get away without stitches.’ He applied a few small bandages shaped like butterflies. ‘It’s a clean cut – very shallow. But I don’t see how a camera could’ve done this. Even if a piece of broken metal was – ’
‘I’m telling you,’ said Stella, ‘this tourist bumped into me with his damn camera. I was standing outside my building, hailing a cab – ’
‘All right, have it your way.’ The doctor walked away from the examination table, saying, ‘But it looks like you’ve been slashed with a razor.’
Martha Sutton’s eyes turned gleeful and sly. She whispered to her client, ‘Great line. We’ll keep it in the act.’
‘But it was a camera.’ Stella was more insistent now.
The agent pointed toward the far wall, where a man was standing behind a glass door. ‘See that guy? He’s a reporter. Now how bad do you want a career, baby doll?’
‘Oh.’ And by this, Stella meant, I’ve got religion – I’ve seen the light. Aloud, she said, ‘I’ve been slashed with a razor.’
‘That’s my girl,’ said Sutton. ‘And play up the idiot who carried you across that hotel lobby. He’s one of my clients. Lucky he didn’t have the brains to stop your bleeding. That trail of blood on the carpet was priceless. Now remember to spell your name for the reporter. He’s another idiot.’ The agent turned to leave, then stopped with an afterthought. ‘I made you an appointment for another audition. Something different – a police station. I just got off the phone with a cop in SoHo. He only wants blond actresses with dry cleaning problems. Do you by any chance have a blouse with a big X drawn on the back?’
Stella nodded. ‘Some bastard got me with a black pen.’
‘Wonderful. The cops are looking for a serial vandal. Pray for a slow news day. Maybe we’ll get your face on TV. And take that blouse with you. It’ll make a great prop.’
‘But I don’t have it anymore,’ said Stella. ‘I threw it away.’
‘No, honey, don’t tell me that. Look me in the eye and tell me you saved that blouse.’
Well, how hard could it be to mark up another one?
‘Okay, I saved it.’ ‘That’s my girl.’
Two hours later and home again, fresh from the shower and clean of blood, Stella Small opened a can of beer in hopes that it might dull the throb in her wounded arm. She spotted a pair of sneakers only partially hidden by her cast-off clothes. No, bad idea. Her agent had given her too much Valium, and tying shoelaces might be too hard. She reached under a chair for a pair of sandals.
Stella flopped down on the couch in a cloud of dust and consulted a copy of Backstage, the only newspaper she ever read. The turned-back page with the schedule of auditions listed nothing for today. Yet she could not lose the nagging idea that she was supposed to be somewhere this afternoon.
She picked up her TV remote and flicked through the channels until she found a children’s program.
Good. Cartoons were easy.
The television screen went black, and no button on the remote control could bring it back to life. This was a bad omen, but Stella was not completely shattered – not yet. She had a fascination for how long a disaster streak could go on and how awful it could become before playing itself out. The young actress was also determined that no life experience would ever go to waste if she could only stay alive in this town.
A bug was moving up her leg. Mid-scream, she stopped and smiled. It was only a spider. She flicked it off her skin and watched it crawl across the floor. It was a big one, but the Abandoned Stellas had always said that a spider in the house was good luck. However, it was a big one. She rolled up her newspaper and smashed the creature flat.
The Abandoned Stellas had said a lot of things.
She reached down to the floor and picked up the bloodstained suit jacket. While going through the pockets, preparing to throw it away, she found a note in her agent’s handwriting.
Oh, right – the cattle call. She read the address of the SoHo police station and the time when she was expected – along with a few hundred other actresses. The stationhouse was within easy walking distance, and there was at least an hour to kill.
The telephone rang, and Stella cringed. She let her answering machine take the call. The young woman from Ohio was much too fragile to deal with New Yorkers right now.
She paid more attention to the machine when the words police department filtered through her Valium fog. Stella grabbed up the phone. ‘Hi! Is this about the actress interviews in SoHo?… No? Midtown? I thought – Oh, right. Sorry. I didn’t know… Yes, I’ll be there.’
And now she recalled her agent dragging her out of an emergency room, though she had been told to wait there until a police officer arrived. She had left the hospital in the company of a tabloid reporter who had taken precedence over the law.
How much trouble was she in?
The timing would be close. With a little luck and a functional subway, she could make the appointments at both police stations, but only if the SoHo interviews went by alphabetical order. Martha Sutton’s note reminded her that she needed a vandalized blouse for a prop.
After rummaging through the closet and the drawers, every article of clothing was strewn about the small apartment, and all the effort of last night’s cleaning binge had been undone. This was so disheartening. Just looking at the mess made her weary. She turned to the smiling portrait of the Abandoned Stellas, but they had no homilies to cover a life spinning out of control.