Auditioning

I remember when Em was taking piano lessons and would have faked bowel cancer if she thought it would get her out of performing in a recital.

So imagine my surprise when she wanted to try out for the summer musical of our community theater.



She may be guilty of padding her resume: over dinner she told me she'd listed piano and clarinet as instruments she played, though she dropped piano five years ago after barely over a year of lessons, and dropped clarinet after an academic year in band almost a year ago.



Singing for me is too humiliating, I might as well ask her to eat my poop, but she was willing enough to walk into a room and do a song for total strangers who made no bones about judging her.

As she was filling out the form, I saw a mother and daughter heading to the chamber of horrors and I did a double take. I thought, I know her. But since I couldn't place her, I wondered if I only imagined it. She's gorgeous, so I wondered if she just looked like some celeb I've been entranced by. But after Em had gone in and I saw the two come out, I thought, No, I know her, sort of anyway.


We both worked in Sauron's forge in Mount Doom, though she quit to be a full time Mom and have beautiful babies about a year after I started my stint.

She had been in Accounts Receivable and on the other side of a cubicle wall from me. Besides being gorgeous, she was maybe the most unflappable person I've ever met. 'I'm not trying to give you a hard time, sir....No, we can't ship that until we get payment for the past-due...' She'd say these things as if the discussion were about recipes.

She and her kiddo had both been into the audition, and I wondered. Em had not wanted me in the room, despite my standing as her agent, photographer and publicist, and when she saw the bit in the paperwork about parents not in the production being banned from the audition room she was ecstatic.



I asked, is it that I can't be in the back, or that I can't be on stage with her?

I can't be there at all was the answer. Unless, like this siren and her daughter, I auditioned myself.