Janine Armin - Toronto Noir

“I remember that one! Where you wore little white shorts and rode a bicycle? That was a classic! But hey, I’m doing better than that, because this is my first job, today, here. Is that wild or what?”

The dreadful meaning of her words seeps into my brain and clogs it up so that I can only repeat, “Today? Here?”

“In the movie that’s shooting up the street! It’s such a great story how I got the part: I auditioned to be a receptionist, and I was mad too young for it, but they liked me so much they created a character in the movie, just for me!” Her eyes dance while she tells this story. The Macarena, it looks like, but still.

A vein in my forehead starts to throb, and I say, dully, “Just for you.”

“Isn’t that amazing? I play a babysitter who looks after Denzel’s kids. The scene we’re doing today is where I take the kids downtown to meet their dad at his office and we witness a shooting on the street that leads to the whole home invasion thing that happens later when I get caught in the cross fire and die.”

“You die? That’s great.” Her eyes stop dancing and I say, “For the acting opportunity, I mean. Death scenes can be real career-makers.”

“I know! But I have to get through this week’s scenes first, and I’m so nervous! What if I sweat all over Denzel when I meet him today? Or faint on him. Wouldn’t that be the worst?” She emits merry peals of laughter at this point, I’m not sure why — because she’s a merry young soul, maybe. I, meanwhile, struggle to swallow the anti-merriment bile that has surged into my mouth.

I can still taste it when an assistant dude comes out of a trailer and calls to Honey that she’s needed inside.

“Hey, break a leg,” I say, in all sincerity.

“Thanks. I’m so glad I ran into you. You’re, like, my role model or whatever. Come visit me on-set when you have a lunch break?”

I’m in no mood for improv, but I feign regret. “I don’t know if I’ll get a break. The Honey Hut gets busy at this time of day.”

“Please? You could coach me. Give me some more of your wise advice.”

“Tell you what: I’ll try.” Sure, I could coach her a little. Or I could cut the bitch. Either one.

My boss Karen is all agog when I go inside and tell her I ran into someone I know who has a part in the movie. She says, “Could she introduce us to Denzel, do you think?”

“I wouldn’t ask her to.”

“Because it would be uncool, you mean?”

“Beyond uncool.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Never mind. What do you say we put out the lavender honey to sample?”

She touches my arm with her bony hand. “I meant that I’m sorry I wasn’t sensitive to how awkward it might be for you to work today, with the shoot going on outside.”

Awkward? Before Honey popped up, the situation was awkward. Now, it’s mortifying, enraging, soul-destroying. I try to breathe deeply and evenly, which is difficult when my forehead vein is throbbing to the beat of a goddamned rock band. When I can speak without spitting, I say, “So, lavender honey, then?”

Karen shakes her head. “I don’t know how you can stand a life in show business.”

Me either.

She says, “It must be so difficult, what with the constant rejection and being passed over in favor of people who are probably no more talented than you are.”

Probably? What the fuck’s with probably?

I spend the next few hours minding the hut, serving customers, and thinking of ways to harm Honey, remove her from the local talent pool. The butter knives we use to spread honey on crackers don’t have sharp edges, but applied with force at the right angle, they could draw blood. The honey walnut cake that we serve could do damage if Honey has an allergy to nuts, but what are the odds of that? I’m picturing taking the end of one of her hair extensions, winding it around the electric juicer we use to squeeze the lemons for honey lemonade, and turning the power to high, when Honey herself shows up at the stand, in full makeup.

She says, “They don’t need me on the set for at least another hour, so I thought I’d come over and visit. Hey, this place is cute!”

Karen begs to be introduced, asks Honey a flurry of questions about Denzel, and gives her a free jar of our finest orange-blossom honey. Honey proclaims delight at this gift, the two of them chat away, and Karen doesn’t read my eyes when I use them to communicate volumes — or even a haiku — about how I want Honey to go away, not linger. “Take a break with Honey, go outside, get some fresh air,” Karen says. “I’ll be fine here.”

I take Honey out to the second-floor veranda on the south side of the building, a picnic tabled area with a less-than-enchanting view of the Gardiner Expressway, an affordable housing complex, and the occasional homeless person shambling by with a shopping buggy. She refuses my offer of a cigarette, I light mine up anyway, and I let the wind blow my exhaled smoke in her direction, but she doesn’t flinch, only retrieves a few pages of script from her bag and says, “Would you mind running lines with me? Pretty please?”

Maybe I can hold up the train of her gown when she goes onstage at the Academy Awards to collect her first Oscar too.

The scene she wants to rehearse calls for her to walk along the shop-lined street, hand-in-hand with two adorable children, singing “The Wheels on the Bus” (Is this cloying and cliché enough, this setup for violence? I can already hear how the scene will be scored, with pingy piano music in a minor key), when a street thug with a gun pops out of a picturesque doorway and, right before the traumatized eyes of the kids and babysitter, shoots dead a gangster who is getting into a limo.

To entertain myself and help Honey get a feel for the material, I could do the voices of the characters in the scene, alternate my pitch and cadence between those of the kids and the adults. But reading the lines in a flat, uninflected tone, like casting directors do whenever I audition, is way more fun. Especially if doing so might freak Honey out or throw her off.

She does better than I thought she would reciting her lines opposite my monotone. She’s not stellar, but not terrible either. The consolation is that she’s not as confident in her line readings as someone in her charmed position could be.

After we’ve run through the scene, she bites her lip and says, “What do you think? Am I underplaying it too much? Should I go bigger?”

I’m stubbing out my cigarette when she says this — not on her arm, because a cigarette burn would not render her unemployable or even unconscious, and scars can be covered with makeup, so why bother? — but on the tarmac floor of the veranda. I grind out the butt, and realize there’s more than one way to end her career before it starts.

I say, “Now that you mention it, I think you could go bigger. In fact, you should. Definitely. Good idea.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ll let you in on a trade secret: You know that crap about how in the theater you have to play to the upper balcony, but in the movies you’re supposed to be low-key in close-up?”

She blanches under the heavy makeup. “That’s crap?”

“I’m afraid so. Especially for someone like you who’s petite to begin with — what height are you without heels, four-foot-eleven?”

“I’m five-three!”

“Same thing. And you’re so young too. If you underplay your part, you’ll be invisible. Which is great if you want no one to notice you in the role, if you want to let the scene be about the other actors and the stunts and the special effects.”

“I don’t want that. This is supposed to be my big break!”

“Then make yourself memorable.”