CHAPTER 5
Samara had been reminded that trailers weren’t soundproof when she’d heard Dana nearly yell her passive-aggressive response through the closed door, but then, she heard something else.
“She’s a piece of work, huh?”
That voice belonged to her scene partner from earlier, and while Samara had always tried to brush off comments like that, this one hurt a bit.
“I’m only here for an audition, so I don’t have a trailer,” the woman said. “Can you point me in the direction of the catering tent so I can grab some food and practice my lines?”
“Oh, it’s just down there,” Dana said. “Straight and at the end. You can’t miss it. You’re running lines?”
Samara pulled a fork out of her drawer and took a bite of her meal, deciding it was one degree cooler than she would have liked, but that wasn’t awful, and it was cooked well. Then, she stood near the door and held on to her food in one hand and the fork in the other.
“Thanks. I’m doing a chemistry read with her, so I need to read and perfect everything.
She’s not the easiest to get a good read from when you’re in an audition.
She’s a great actress, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not like she’s in there trying to help me out, you know? It’s basically a chore to her.”
Okay. That one did hurt. Samara had been trying.
She was just exhausted. She hadn’t slept well in the queen bed with the lumpy mattress and way-too-soft pillows.
She knew if she continued to stay at that hotel, she’d need to change rooms or have them change the mattress, at least, and give her some firmer pillows.
The other option was to change hotels or find that vacation rental for the same price.
Of course, she could also get what she wanted herself, charge the production for the room rate, and pay the difference.
She’d hate doing that because that hadn’t been part of the arrangement, but it was worth considering.
“I’m Dana.”
“Grace,” the woman replied.
That was her name. Samara hadn’t remembered it from the first set of auditions, and she didn’t want to admit that, so when Grace had walked into the room for her audition, she had pretended that she knew it. Everyone else must have, so they had gone right into the reading.
Samara really had been trying, but Grace hadn’t exactly been giving her anything.
The scenes they were reading were intense.
Bray and Stella had met one night, instantly hit it off, had one amazing kiss, and gotten pulled away.
They wouldn’t reconnect for a full year.
So, these opening scenes were really crucial, and the chemistry had to be there.
Vanessa had been the clear frontrunner for the role, with Grace and the other one from earlier far behind.
“I’m an actress. Local stuff, mostly, and I’m no Samara Barber, but if you want help, I’m free now that I’ve delivered Princess Barber her food.”
Dana had just said she was no Samara Barber. That made Samara smile before she took another bite and continued to eavesdrop and not feel bad about it because they both knew that she was only on the other side of this wall.
“Really? You don’t mind?” Grace asked.
“No. I was going to grab food here anyway. It’s free.”
“That would be really cool. Thanks. I know they already auditioned someone before me, so I don’t know if I have a real chance here, but it would be cool to get it, even if I didn’t get it the first time.”
“Yeah, come on,” Dana replied. “I’ll walk you over, and we’ll run through it together.”
Samara heard the voices taper off and decided to walk to the window and separate the horizontal blinds to check that the two women indeed were walking away.
Dana was an actress? And she knew the writer and probably Sophie as well if they were friends.
Why hadn’t she auditioned? The movie was set and filmed here, in New Orleans, where she lived if she worked for the local catering crew.
Dana fit the age and type for the roles.
Maybe she had auditioned and hadn’t gotten whatever part she’d tried out for.
Maybe she wasn’t talented enough. Hell, maybe she had auditioned for Stella and hadn’t gotten it, so she now hated Samara because she had.
Either way, Samara was curious and decided to check it out.
She took a few more quick bites of her food, giving her enough to sustain her until she could order another smoothie, which would hold her over until breakfast, and then left her trailer and walked down toward where catering had been set up for everyone else.
She didn’t want Dana or Grace to know that she was there, which was difficult because when people noticed her, they tended to make a big deal about it, so she kept to the space between the trailers and a fence that butted up against a row of houses like a total creeper.
“You know all the secret spots, huh?” Grace, playing Bray, said.
Samara stood at the back of the tent and listened to Grace and Dana, who were sitting at a table with their backs toward her.
“In case you’re wondering, it should be relatively clean.
This is at least the tenth different sofa I’ve seen here since I moved back.
Not that I come out a lot. I don’t, really.
I only came out tonight to meet my friend who’d invited me.
But when you go out to one bar in the Quarter, you always end up in at least one more that night, and, well, I come upstairs in these places when I can because they’re quieter and not as crowded, so I’ve noticed the sofa.
I think they replace it a lot. The bars open early here, and not everyone comes to get totally wasted, so they have nicer seating for the early crowd.
I’m talking way too much about this couch, aren’t I?
” Dana, playing Stella, Samara’s actual role, chuckled a little, making Samara smile.
“I like it. And we can keep talking about the couch, if you want, but I’d honestly rather talk more about you.”
“I’m pretty boring,” Dana said, reading Stella’s line.
“Oh, I doubt that.”
“No, really.” Dana laughed lightly, and damn, if it didn’t appear more genuine than Samara’s fake laugh when she had run lines with herself for the audition. “I push papers for a living.”
“Is there good money in that?”
Dana continued laughing and said, “Not really, no.”
“Bummer. I was looking for a sugar mama tonight.”
Grace’s delivery of that was fine, but she hadn’t really sought out the punch of the joke, so it left Samara wanting more. All of Grace’s auditions had done that for her.
“Well, that’s definitely not me. I more move around digital files than push actual paperwork, but I’m middle management, and it’s boring, and I hate it.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Grace said.
“Me too. I actually only came out with my friend tonight because she works for the company I used to work for. She’s about to take it over – or, at least, I thought she was – and I was going to see if she could get me a job.
I used to work there, so I thought it would be a win-win for both of us.
I’d start over, if that was all that was available, but I found out that she might be leaving the company tonight, so I don’t know if that’s even possible now. ”
“You should still ask her. Maybe she can help, even if she’s leaving.”
“I’m sure she can; it’s her family’s company. I’d just feel bad about asking her when it sounds like she’s going through a lot of transitions.”
“Can we stop here?” Grace said as herself.
“Sure,” Dana replied, leaning back in the folding chair.
“I just don’t have it yet. Can we try the later stuff? I have a feeling they’ll want me to read the scene leading up to the kiss.”
“Yeah, sure. But, no offense, Grace: I’m not kissing you in the catering tent,” Dana joked.
Grace laughed and said, “None taken. I’m straight anyway.”
“You are?”
“Yeah, I have a boyfriend. Well, he should be a fiancé by now, but he keeps putting off asking me to marry him, even though I know he has the ring, so there’s that. You?”
“No boyfriend.” Dana shook her head. “No girlfriend, either.”
“Ah,” Grace said. “Got it.”
Samara felt bad about eavesdropping on their conversation.
Watching them read lines was one thing, but listening in as they talked to one another was something else altogether.
She turned to go, thinking about Grace’s performance in the four auditions she had seen from her.
None of them had been where they needed to be.
The other actress who had flown in from Austin and read with Samara earlier was closer, but still not there.
Samara knew it was a little crazy, and that was especially true because she didn’t like Dana as a person at all, but if neither of these actresses was impressive, they’d have to open it back up to auditions again, and each day they weren’t filming would mean delays and budget struggles, and the movie might not ever get made.
She hadn’t flown all the way here to deal with delays only to have the whole thing postponed again or canceled.
“Hi. Is Bryce here?” she asked when she walked into the office trailer.
“She’s inside,” the PA said, nodding toward the building outside behind them.
“Okay. Thanks,” she replied and headed back outside.
Then, she walked into the building, finding Bryce and Reed sitting at the table, with the casting director staring at headshots, which only confirmed her suspicions that none of them were happy with the two actresses’ performances so far.
“Samara? Was something wrong with your food?” Bryce asked when she saw her.
“No, it was fine. Thank you,” she replied, pulling up a chair in front of the table and sitting down. “Should I assume that we’re all on the same page here? It’s not either of them, is it?”
“We’re going to have you and Grace read the kiss scene and one later, in the art gallery, and see what we get,” the casting director said. “But, so far, yes.”
“Vanessa just had it,” Bryce added, sounding really disappointed. “And I’m saying that. She’s literally playing me, and I thought she was great at it.”
“She was great,” Samara agreed. “I’ll still read with Grace after dinner, obviously, but are we bringing in new people?”
“We really don’t have the time,” Reed said. “We’re already condensing the two and a half months of production we need into two months because we’re behind.”
“How are we already behind, besides losing Vanessa?” Samara asked.
“She means that we were supposed to make the movie last year, and it was going to be released this year,” Bryce explained. “But we lost our slot and money then, so we need to get it done and off to the streamer soon, or they’ll push our date out even further or scrap us altogether.”
“What about Dana?” Samara asked.
“Who’s Dana?” the casting director asked.
“Dana, the caterer,” she said. “I overheard her talking earlier; she said she was an actress. Did she audition? You’re friends, right, Bryce?”
“Sort of, yeah. Soph and I moved to LA before Dana joined this big group of friends that we’re part of here.” Bryce smiled. “I’ve met her a handful of times. There were a couple of weddings earlier this year, and she was at one of them, but not the other. That kind of thing.”
“Did she audition?”
“No,” Bryce answered. “I heard from someone that she works in film catering because she does want to break into the business, but she didn’t audition for this.”
“Maybe she should,” Samara suggested. “I mean, I have no idea if she’s any good, but she’s here and available if she’s already working on the movie’s catering.”
“Is this your attempt to get someone else to make and bring you your food?” Reed joked.
Samara laughed and replied, “No. I just know she was helping Grace run lines a few minutes ago. I overheard them, and she was reading my part, obviously, so I don’t know if she could pull off Bray, but the little I heard, she wasn’t bad.”
“You want her to audition?” Bryce asked.
“It’s probably nothing, but like I said, she’s already here.
She’d also be cheaper than Vanessa, if that’s worth anything.
You can still bring in other people, of course, but that’ll take days; get them here, if they’re flying in, go through all of them the first time, have them read with me after that, narrow them down, and decide. ”
“Trust us, we know,” Reed said with a sigh. “I just worry that no matter who we read, they won’t compare to Vanessa. She had that swagger thing that Bray has.”
“Thanks,” Bryce replied, smirking.
“Oh, shut up,” Reed said with a laugh. “When are you going to use that swagger to put a ring on it, by the way? That will really help sell our true love story when we’re released.”
“Hey, I’m working on it,” Bryce replied.
“Working on it? You’ve been together for almost two years. You live together. You bought the damn house in LA together.”
“After,” Bryce said. “I’ve been so focused on the movie and our new life in LA. I don’t want to ask Soph to marry me and be distracted still. I want that to be the start of us planning that next chapter of our lives together.”
“So, Dana?” Samara asked, bringing them back around to the topic that mattered.
“I can ask her,” Bryce replied. “I doubt she even has an agent, though. If I remember right, Lainey, her sister, told Sophie that she’s trained professionally but does theater here.”
“Theater actors are hit or miss,” Reed offered.
“Well, Samara is right: Dana’s here, and she’s an actress who’s in our age range and type. It’s not a bad idea. We could spend five minutes having her read, and if it’s not there, we tell her, and she goes back to catering. If it is, we’ll have her read with Samara and see what happens there.”
“If you want to, fine. We’d have to figure out the union stuff, though. If she’s not union, that could be a problem, but go for it. We’re still wrapping up with Grace tonight, so make it for tomorrow,” Reed said.
“I’ll call Cynthia’s team and let them know we’re moving on without her,” the casting director said.
Cynthia. That was the name of the first woman Samara had auditioned with.