The NY agent sent her two sides. She printed them out and worked on them for a few days and I’d see her mouthing the words in the evenings. Her hands danced in the air and I had to resist asking her what she was saying. I wanted to know, but also I understood that she needed the space; that puncturing the chamber of her rehearsal would simply distract her from her purpose and bring frustration rather than connection.
Then one morning, she asked me to help her run lines.
She handed me the pages that had become dogeared in just a few days. Yellow highlighter drew my eye like a flashlight beam in the dark.
The first piece was a conversation between a man and a woman at their daughter’s softball game. Between pitches and cheers, they talked about money and jobs and how to pay for pizza. The second piece was a simple monologue about the moment the woman fell in love with her husband. He’d taken her out to a cornfield to look at the stars and made a ring from a firefly for her.
The first piece was like something our friend DK would’ve written. Simple and meaningful and present. The second was like my writing, poignant and vulnerable and true.
I read the sides like I was supposed to, in the voice she will meet in the room where the audition happens: neutral and cold. Passive.
But my heart betrayed me and I could feel the pull of the words and how well they found a place within me. I looked up after and she could see how I felt. About her. And myself. And the world where we met, that we still fit in, and love, and still meet in.
And I could see I wasn’t alone in all that either.
It felt good and soft and tender.
“It’s fine writing,” I said. But I did not stand up to go. I just waited. Looking across the table at her with a brimming heart.
