Paullina Simons - The Tiger Catcher

“Oh, come now, Mr. No-at-All . I told you, I go on at 4:30.”

“Will never happen. We’re four miles away in heavy traffic.”

“Mr. Pessimist,” she said. “What did Bette Davis reply to Johnny Carson when he asked her how to get to Hollywood?”

“She said ‘Take Fountain,’” said Julian.

“Very good! So you do know some stuff. Follow Bette’s advice, Julian. Take Fountain.” She flapped open the book she had bought. “Look what you did, you kept me yapping so long, I forgot to prepare a monologue. I don’t know a single line for Beatrice.”

“Start with, In the midway of this, our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood … ”

“And then?”

“That’s all I know,” Mr. Know-it-All said.

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Perhaps you can go off book on another line or two from your years in the theatre?”

“From Beatrice? From Divine Comedy ?”

“So audition for the narrator,” Julian said. “You’d make a great Dante. You were a very good Housman.”

“Please don’t stare at me, drive,” she said. “Is this jalopy a car or a horse buggy?”

“The Volvo is one of the best, safest cars on the road,” Julian said, offended for his oft-maligned automobile.

“I’m thrilled you’re safe,” she said. “Can you be safe and step on it?”

“We’re at a red light.”

“I’ve never seen so many red lights in my life,” Josephine said. “I think you’re willing them to be red. Like you want me to be late.”

“Why would I want that?” Face straight. Voice even.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” Almost as an aside, she added, “You know, if I get this gig, I’ll have to stay in L.A. for the summer.”

Julian’s jalopy grew wings and in it he flew to Griffith Park, screeching into a parking spot seventeen minutes later. “Ashton is right, miracles really do abound,” he said. “I’ve never made it here in less than a half-hour.”

“Really, hmm,” she said. “How often do you do this, Speedy Gonzalez, take strange stranded women to the Greek?” Flinging open the door, she motioned for him. “Come in with me. You can be my good luck charm.”

The theatre was nearly empty except for a few dozen people sitting in the front rows. Built into the cliffs of the untamed Santa Monica Mountains, the open amphitheatre was a little disquieting with its spooky silence and vacant red seats, the shrubby eucalyptus rising all around.

At the side gate, a girl with a clipboard stood in Phone Pose—head down like a horse at the water—texting. Josephine gave her name—and then Julian’s! He pulled at her sleeve. The girl didn’t see his name on the call sheet. “Must be an oversight,” Josephine said. They began to argue. “Clearly someone has made a mistake,” Josephine said. “Go get your supervisor immediately.”

Thirty seconds later, they were taking their seats in side orchestra, him with a number and a sticker. “That’s a great hack I learned from the theatre life, Julian,” Josephine said. “Today, I give it to you for free. Never yell down to get what you want. Always yell up . You’re welcome.”

“Why did you do that?” he whispered.

“Shh. She wouldn’t have let you in otherwise. You saw how she wallowed in her petty power. You want to perform, don’t you?”

“I most certainly do not.”

Josephine gave his forearm a good-natured pinch. “You said you were Ernest in high school. You must know something from Wilde by heart. I did.”

“Am I you?”

“What you are is number 50. You have ten minutes. I suggest you start practicing.”

“Josephine, I’m not reading.”

She stopped listening. They sat next to each other, their arms touching, her bare leg pressed against his khaki trousers. She was mouthing something, while his mind stayed a stubborn blank. Anxiously he stared at the stage. He was nervous for her, not for himself. He knew that despite her shenanigans he wasn’t going up there, but he really wanted her to get the part. A large sweaty man with messy hair recited Dante from the first canto. After four lines he was stopped. A bird of a woman followed. A pair of identical sisters got seven lines in before they were shooed off the stage.

“If you can get through your monologue,” Julian said quietly, after watching the others, “you’ll be all right. Here’s a hack for you. You’re rehearsing, not auditioning. Act like you already have the part.”

“But I don’t have the part. How the heck do I do that?”

“You act ,” he said.

Her number was called. “Number 49. Josephine Collins.”

“Wish me luck,” she whispered, throwing Julian her bag and jumping up.

“You don’t need it. You have the part.” Julian watched her let down her long hair and become someone else on the stage, someone who projected without a microphone into the 6000-seat amphitheatre, someone who didn’t speak in a breathy femme fatale voice, someone with a British accent. She stood tall, eyes up, chin up, her body in dramatic pose, and shouted up into the empty seats.

What power is it, which mounts my love so high,

That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?

The mightiest space in fortune nature brings

To join like likes and kiss like native things—

The casting crank in the front row stopped her. “Miss Collins, what is that you are reading for us?”

“Shakespeare, sir, from All’s Well that Ends —”

“This is an audition for Paradise in the Park. You’re supposed to be reading for either Beatrice or Dante.”

“Of course. I was showcasing my abilities. How about this”—she lowered her voice to a deep bass, looked up, beat her breast—“ through me you pass through the city of woe, through me you pass into eternal pain —”

“Thank you—next. Number 50. Julian Cruz. Mr. Cruz, have you prepared some Dante for us?”

BACK AT HIS CAR, THEY LINGERED. SHE CALLED HIM chicken for telling the director he had nothing prepared, and he agreed, not wanting to take her home. She tied up her hair and put away her fake glasses. She looked like herself again, simple and perfect. The ends of her sheer blouse swayed in the breeze.

“I wish it wasn’t so late in the day,” she said, glancing at the hills around the theatre. “We could take a walk up there. I could show you something.”

“Show me anyway,” he said. “Wait—up where?”

“What, you agreed too fast? No, no backsies. I’ll have to show you another day.”

“Okay—when?”

She laughed. They leaned against his gray Volvo, drinking from the same water bottle. Julian’s thoughts were racing. “What’s your favorite movie?”

“Dunno. Why?”

“Come on. What is it? Titanic ?”

“Ugh, no, I don’t care for all that dying in icy water, don’t care for it one bit,” she said, peering at him through slitted eyes. “ Apocalypse Now .”

Julian did a double take. “ Apocalypse Now is your favorite movie?”

She stayed poker-faced. “Sure. Why is that surprising?”

“No reason.” He fake-coughed. “I’ve never seen it.”

Now it was her turn to do a double take. “You’ve never seen Apocalypse Now ?”

“No. Why is that surprising?”

“Because it’s such a guy movie. We should watch it sometime.”

“Okay—when?”

She laughed. They lingered a bit longer.

“Listen—I gotta head back,” she said.