Chapter 2
BIANCA
Three bucks, two bags, one me!
Those were the words ping-ponging through my head when I stepped off the plane at LaGuardia Airport.
The words of the Star-to-Be in the musical Annie.
It’s a small role with a single solo in the show, but it’s launched the career of many a Broadway starlet, the likes of which include Sutton Foster and Laurie Beechman.
I had just finished four years of school at Oklahoma City University. Musical theatre major, of course. I spent years perfecting my sixteen-bar audition cuts, studying the acting theories of Uta Hagen and Stanislavsky, and learning the intricacies of ballet, jazz, and tap dancing.
And just like a billion women before me, I stepped off that plane a girl with a big dream.
My name in lights. Singing my heart out to a crowd of strangers. The roaring applause of hundreds as I take my final bow.
Of course, dreams are for nighttime.
By day, my life in the Big Apple has been a nightmare.
No one prepares you for this part of an acting career in school.
Rent in NYC is astronomical. If you don’t have rich parents footing your bills, you can expect to either live in a shoebox or share a larger space with five roommates.
My parents are rich, but they’re not footing the bill. No, Robinson and Circe Montrose thought their second-born daughter should be doing something more monotonous, something more in line with her timid nature. Maybe Rouge, their golden child, could have made it on Broadway.
But Bianca? Sweet little Bianca, with her light-blond hair and porcelain skin?
The Big Apple was going to eat her alive.
But I was determined to prove them wrong. I got a decent scholarship at OCU and took loans to cover the rest.
Of course, the problem with loans is that you eventually have to pay them back.
That plus rent quickly exhausted what little money I managed to put away during college.
So I grabbed jobs wherever I could. A lot of barista gigs, some retail. Even a short stint as a receptionist for a law firm.
But the problem with those jobs? They conflict with auditions.
I would either have to beg a coworker to cover for me whenever an opportunity popped up or let it pass me by so I could eat that week.
Eventually I quit going for those gigs and turned to dancing in my underwear for complete strangers in a bar in Midtown. I’m on my way there for my shift right now.
The hours are good—they leave my days open for auditions—and the tips excellent.
Not exactly what little Bianca dreamed of when she stepped off that plane, but I’m getting paid to perform, right?
At least that’s what I tell myself every time I get on that tiny stage, my tits spilling out of the microscopic bikini top I wear.
It’s a means to an end. A waystation on my road to the Great White Way.
But…when will I reach the end?
I’ve been dancing there for five years now, and taken audition after audition, each one more fruitless than the last. I’ve done everything I can.
Consulted countless vocal coaches, worked my monologues to death, starved myself for two weeks to get that Kate Moss look for my headshots.
Stood in line for hours for every cattle call I could find.
And all I’ve gotten after every audition is a brisk “thank you” and a gesture to the door.
That was the case for my first audition, and that was the case for the three auditions I took just this last week.
Meanwhile, Rouge has risen through the ranks of the family business, and our father is grooming her to take over the family’s most prestigious asset, Aces Underground.
She’s had everything handed to her. Always has.
Granted, she’s apparently brought some great ideas of her own to the fold. Mom was telling me the other day. She wants to dress the waitstaff up as playing cards, each of them assigned a specific number and suit.
Sounds weird, but Dad is apparently eating it up.
Rouge is smart. A genius, even.
But there’s also a darkness to her. Something I saw a lot of during our childhood especially.
She learned to mask it well, but every time I’m in her presence, I can feel it.
I’ve developed a sort of intuition about these things. I can feel when things are about to go sour. It usually manifests into a twitch over my left eyebrow, but sometimes it’s just a feeling in my gut.
Maybe it’s my acting training. My ability to read other people, other situations. To be a good actress, you have to be intuitive.
A lot of freaking good it’s done me.
After nearly a decade in this godforsaken town, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m just another one of those faceless girls destined to be defeated by the City of Dreams.
A girl who was a star in a small pond but not able to find her light when pitted against a million others just like her.
Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing if I swallowed my pride and went home, tail tucked firmly between my legs.
Mom and Dad are getting old. Dad especially is in bad shape. They’ll need someone to take care of them while Rouge is running Aces. They didn’t support this dream, but they still love me and will give me a place to stay while I find my bearings once I come back to Chicago.
I don’t love the idea of returning to my childhood home in my thirties, but what else can I—
My phone rings.
The number is one I don’t recognize. More than likely a robocall, but it’s a New York area code. I always answer those.
I was about to take the staircase down to the subway, but I walk to the edge of the sidewalk and answer the call, fully expecting an automated voice spewing some bullshit about my car’s extended warranty.
“Hello?”
“Bianca Montrose?” a male voice asks.
“Yes, speaking.”
“Wonderful. Lawrence Shippe, casting director for Skylight Productions. How are you doing this evening?”
Holy cow. A casting agent?
“Y-Yes. I’m doing fine. How are you?”
“Great, thanks for asking. Listen, Skylight is producing a new musical, Reflections, which we’re mounting at the Quadrille Theatre on Broadway in a few months. We loved your audition last week and would like to invite you to our callbacks to read for the role of Lisa. Are you available?”
My heart flutters. This is my first callback in ages, and my first ever for a show on actual Broadway.
I put the call on speaker and open the calendar app on my phone. “When were callbacks again?” I ask, praying I’m available.
“Thursday afternoon at Snowdrop Spaces. I trust you’re familiar?”
“Yes, I’ve done lots of auditions there.”
“Excellent. We’ll be calling back all the Lisas at three p.m. That work?”
I write it into my calendar app. “You bet it will!”
“Wonderful. Thanks, Bianca. We’re looking forward to seeing and hearing you.”
“Likewise.” I swallow. “I mean, rather, I’m looking forward to the callback.”
Mr. Shippe chuckles. “All right. Take care.”
* * *
Wow, Reflections.
That feels like a lifetime ago.
I sigh as I sit at my makeup station in my dressing room at Aces Underground. I’ve finished my pre-show routine. Steamed my voice, done some vocal warmups, looked over my music.
Now I’m fixing up my makeup for tonight’s show.
I prefer a natural look, but those pink lights in the Hearts section are harsh. I have to cake on a decent amount of foundation and shadow to counter them, otherwise my face will just be a rosy blob to the club patrons.
Not that many of them look at me. At least, not when I’m singing, that is.
A lot of the men get a look at all of me behind closed doors, but that’s another story.
I look at the woman in the mirror. I’m nearly forty now, but a lifestyle of going to the gym five times a week, eating well, and performing an intricate evening facial routine after each show has kept me looking youthful. Forty isn’t that old anymore, anyway.
There’s still a glimmer of the girl who took the call for Lawrence Shippe inviting her to the Reflections callback.
God, I thought that show was going to be my big break.
But I thought a lot of things when I lived in New York.
I gaze back into my own reflection, and I’m strangely envious of her.
The woman on the other side of the mirror lives in a world where things go the other way.
All the bad decisions I made in my life, this woman made the opposite.
She’s probably looking into her reflection in a private dressing room of a big Broadway show.
Preparing for a performance of some classic.
Maybe Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. My favorite musical.
Johanna, the title character’s daughter, has long been my dream role.
The music in Sweeney Todd is so thrilling, so virtuosic.
A world away from the music I sing here at Aces. The sultry, jazzy songbook favorites that I’ve belted out every weekend and holiday night for the last five years.
I keep begging Rouge to let me change things up a bit, add in some of the songs I worked so hard on when I was running the audition circuit in New York, but those requests fell on deaf ears.
I turn to a knock on my dressing room door.
“Bianca? Are you decent?”
Speak of the ruffle-clad devil herself.
“Yes, Rouge,” I call out. “Come in.”
Rouge walks through my door effortlessly, despite the large Elizabethan ballgown she’s wearing.
She wears a lot of green during March, and tonight’s number features cascading emerald velvet and delicate sage organza with a heavy bodice gleaming with silver-threaded vines and peridot beadwork.
Her outrageous attire, as usual, eclipses the simple cream gown with matching heels I’ve chosen tonight.
She looks me up and down, a strange combination of smile and scowl twisting her lips. “I wanted to look over your set. I’ll be over at the Jade Sanctum tonight, and after that I have to do my weekly check-in at the Caterpillar, so I won’t be able to hear you, unfortunately.”
I stand and walk across the room, nearly tripping over a bunch of iron rods piled up in a corner. “How much longer are you going to be using my dressing room for storage, by the way?”
“Thank you for being such a good sport about that. I’ve been on the phone with my contractor, and he says the work to fortify my office security should be done in a week or so.
” She looks to the corner, her lips pursed.
“Until then, thank you so much for keeping the branding irons and extra uniforms for the staff in here.”
Right. A few club patrons broke into Rouge’s office a few weeks ago. I’m not sure who, and my sister is incredibly tightlipped whenever anyone brings it up. Since then, she’s been adding extra security measures to her office and using my dressing room to hold all her extra crap.
I walk past the clutter and pick up a sheet of paper with tonight’s rep selections printed on it. I hold it out to Rouge. “Nothing out of the ordinary, just as you like it.”
She snatches the paper and scans it. “‘At Last’… ‘I Put a Spell on You’… Good, good… Oh, ‘The Man I Love.’ I adore that one.”
“You adore all of them, Rouge. That’s why they’re on the list.”
She narrows her eyes. “Do I detect a hint of disdain in your voice, sister?”
My breath catches in my throat. “No… Of course not. I just… It wouldn’t kill us to throw in some new works now and then, would it?”
Rouge smiles. Sort of. “Sweetheart, the songs we sing at Aces are the tried and true. The ones that are timeless. I appreciate your input, but why don’t you focus on putting on a good show, and I’ll handle the nitty-gritty of it all, okay?
” She hands me the setlist. “We’re all good here.
I’ll expect a full report when I return. ”
“Of course, Rouge.” I sit back down in my makeup chair and turn to my mirror. “Will there be anything else?”
She darts her gaze around the room, frowning. “Everything seems to be in order. Good luck tonight. I’ll see you when I return. Ta-ta!” She exits the room, closing the door behind her.
I grab my eye pencil out of my bag and continue working on my makeup.
I’m not surprised that Rouge rebuffed my suggestion. I ask once every few months, and the answer is always the same. I could have said the words along with her.
Tried and true.
Timeless.
Don’t get me wrong. These songs are great. But I spent years in NYC collecting a book of so many great songs by a diverse range of composers and lyricists. It feels like a waste to be singing the same pieces night after night.
But it’s Rouge’s way or the highway here at Aces Underground.
Has been ever since Dad handed her the keys.
I can’t help another sigh as I run a line under my eye with the pencil.
I owe my entire life to Rouge. When I came to her, it was at my lowest point.
She gave me a steady job singing and performing, and I make a nice chunk of change by offering my—ahem—other services to the Aces patronage.
I can afford a luxury apartment right in the middle of downtown Chicago, a far cry from the mousehole I called home in New York.
I’m doing what I love, even if it’s not quite the avenue I hoped for when I stepped off that plane at LaGuardia Airport all those years ago.
I should be happy.
Except that I’m not.