CHAPTER 7
Samara sat in her trailer reviewing her lines, and when she took breaks, she checked hotels and local rentals on her phone.
She was leaning more toward the hotel because that would come with daily housekeeping and room service to suit her needs better.
As she checked one hotel after the other, she was careful to review their restaurant menus and room service hours, preferring one that was open twenty-four hours a day since her schedule wasn’t exactly regular, and she could wrap at four in the morning on a night shoot and might need to eat by five.
When she heard a knock on her door, Samara checked the time, and it was noon exactly.
She stood from the small table in the middle right of her trailer, walked to unlock the door that she was choosing to keep locked, even if she was inside, unless it was absolutely necessary to leave it unlocked, and saw Dana standing there.
“Lunch,” Dana said. “I wheeled it over here all by itself in the warmer, so it should be hot enough.”
Samara looked behind Dana, noticed a brown six-foot-tall warmer on wheels, and looked back at her.
“Thank you,” she replied and took the aluminum container from her.
“Sure,” Dana said and turned to go.
“Actually, can you come in for a moment?” she asked.
“You want me to stay in case it’s not hot enough, don’t you?”
“What? No,” she said quickly. “Can you take a break from whatever it is you do to talk to me for a few minutes?”
“Whatever it is that I do? I’m on the catering staff. I literally just handed you your food. See this warmer behind me?” Dana asked, hooking her thumb back to it.
“I know that. I meant I don’t know what you’re doing next. I assume you don’t just deliver my meals,” Samara said, still standing in the open doorway of her trailer.
“You’d be correct.”
“Okay. So, can you take a break from what you have to do next, then?”
“I’m supposed to return to serving everyone else lunch.”
“Oh,” Samara said and looked down at the walkie-talkie that Dana had on her hip. “Tell your boss I wanted to talk to you about my upcoming meals.” She pointed to it and turned to go back inside. “I need to get this open and eat, or it will get cold.”
“I can’t just–”
“Tell him I’m forcing you to stay. It’s my fault. Blame me.”
“Well, that’s not exactly far off, so I guess it wouldn’t be a lie,” Dana replied, stepping up and inside before closing the door behind her. “So, this isn’t about your meals, I take it?” She reached for her walkie-talkie and pressed the button. “Hey, boss? Come in.”
A few seconds later, it crackled, and a male voice said, “Yeah, Dana. What’s up?”
“I’m going to be 86 for a few. Miss Barber wants to talk to me about her meals.”
“Oh, shit. Is something else wrong now?”
“No, boss. And Miss Barber is right here, so I’ll just report back when I see you, okay?”
Samara removed the lid from the aluminum container, smiling at Dana’s attempt to save her boss’s job, and turned back around to see Dana standing there awkwardly.
“Uh… Okay. Copy that.”
“Sit. Sit,” she said. “Do you eat eggplant?”
“Huh?” Dana asked. “Oh, no. Not really.”
“I have some vegan snacks in the cabinet and fridge if you want to eat with me,” she offered.
“I had my lunch already. Thanks.”
“Are you lying?” Samara asked, reaching for a fork in the drawer behind her.
“Yes,” Dana replied.
Samara nodded and said, “Sit, please.”
She motioned to the table where she had left her phone and script.
“Okay.”
“Drink?” Samara asked.
“I’m okay.”
“Really? You’re sweating a little. It’s unseasonably warm today. I saw it hit eighty, and I thought it was supposed to be in the sixties this time of year here.”
“Yeah,” Dana said, but offered nothing else.
Samara pulled out two cold sparkling waters and placed them on the table.
“Okay. Well, I’m going to eat as we talk, if that’s okay.”
“I don’t think I have much of an option,” Dana replied.
“You haven’t been kidnapped, Dana. If you really want to go, you can. I’m not trying to keep you here against your will.” Samara sat down next to Dana with her food and took her first bite of the grilled eggplant. “Perfect,” she added with a smile. “Thank you, by the way.”
“What for?”
“Bringing it here in that ridiculous warmer. Why is it so large?”
“It’s all we had, and you didn’t want your food to touch anyone else’s. I thought that would be the safest way. I asked my boss to buy one of those warmer bag things so that I can just carry that next time.”
Samara smiled at the thought before she remembered that Dana wasn’t doing that for her. She was doing it to keep her job, or at least her boss’s job. Samara wiped the smile off her face and took another bite, chewing before she said anything else.
“So, you’re an actress?” she asked.
“Uh… Yeah,” Dana replied. “Bryce said this morning that you were the one who recommended that they get me to audition.”
“I was,” she said, feeling proud of herself.
Then, she tried to open the screw top on her sparkling water, but Dana took it from her and cracked the top open for her without a word, setting it back down in front of her.
“Why?”
“Why what?” she asked, a little taken aback and shaking herself out of Dana just opening her bottle like that.
“Why did you recommend me? How did you know I acted?”
“I overheard you talking to Grace yesterday,” she said. “And I thought that since you were here already, it might be a good idea.”
“Got it,” Dana replied. “Convenience thing.”
“Technically, I’ve also seen a little of your work,” she said and swallowed.
“My work? Huh?”
“Well, I overheard you working with Grace by the catering tent. I know you were playing my part, but I thought you were decent. I only overheard a piece of it, obviously, so I suggested to Bryce that if you have some acting experience already, we should just audition you and see. Then, when I went back to my dreadful hotel last night, I found some of your plays on YouTube and watched a few snippets.”
“The community theater stuff?”
“Yes,” Samara confirmed and took another bite.
“It’s just local community theater.”
“But you’re trained, aren’t you? I’ve worked with trained and untrained actors. I can tell the difference.”
“I went to Carnegie Mellon,” Dana said with a shrug.
Samara nearly choked on her food and quickly reached for her water. She coughed and took a long gulp.
“You okay?” Dana checked as she shifted over in the small booth seat along the back of the trailer and smacked lightly at Samara’s back.
“I’m okay,” she said as the coughing ceased. “That’s one of the top drama schools in the country.”
“I know,” Dana replied. “They only have an undergrad program, so I was going to go to NYU for my grad work.”
“Did you not get in?”
“I got in, but Pittsburgh was a lot more welcoming to me than New York. I went there for a weekend over the summer, and I… just didn’t feel like it was for me.
I wanted to keep going with school, but it was expensive, and my parents had already helped with my undergrad.
I didn’t get scholarships or anything, so I decided to pass and come home to save up some money before moving out to LA. ”
“Wow,” Samara said, feeling a little stunned.
“What?”
“You went to Carnegie and got into NYU. Both of those schools are top-notch for drama.”
“I know. I didn’t get into Juilliard–”
“I didn’t, either,” Samara revealed, interrupting her.
“What?” Dana asked.
“Well, technically, I’m not exactly trained,” she shared.
“I’ve been working since I was eight years old, so you could say I had on-the-job training, but I finished high school at fifteen, since I had tutors on set and got done early, and at sixteen, I was thinking about taking a break to go to school.
I applied to Juilliard, but they were unimpressed with my body of work. ”
“Oh,” Dana said.
“I guess TV shows as a kid and a few Hollywood movies weren’t enough for them to believe that I was worth their time. Did they tell you why you didn’t get in?”
“Um…” Dana began with hesitation. “So, I did, technically.”
“You just said you didn’t.”
“Yeah, at first. You interrupted me when I was trying to say that I didn’t get in at first. I was waitlisted.”
“Oh,” Samara said, feeling a little like a fool now, so she looked down at her food and began pushing it around with her fork.
“I got the call after I’d already decided to come home that I’d gotten in.”
“So, you turned Juilliard down?” Samara asked, nodding repeatedly for some reason.
“My mom got sick,” Dana replied.
Samara looked up, concerned.
“She’s fine now, but after I decided not to stay in New York and came home, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
They caught it pretty early, thankfully, but she was in treatment for a while, and my sister and I both wanted to be here for her to help her and my dad.
Besides, Juilliard is still in New York, and I’m just not sure I could live there full-time or even during the program.
Most MFAs are at least three years; many are four. ”
Samara took a sip of her water and replied, “I think you made the right decision. Family first, right?”
“Yeah,” Dana agreed. “So, where did you end up going?”
“Nowhere. I got a part and just decided to keep doing what I was doing. I can’t be that bad if they keep casting me in movies, right?”
“Probably not,” Dana said.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Maybe,” Dana replied.
Samara chuckled at that and at the look of fear in Dana’s eyes. She was clearly still worried that Samara was going to get her fired, which made her even more interesting because Dana had managed to hold Samara’s gaze during her entire audition despite that.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty,” Dana said with a shoulder shrug.
“And you got out of school when you were twenty-two?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You came back here and took care of your mom; that, I understand. But if she’s better now, why are you still here, catering? It’s been eight years.”
“I like it here,” Dana replied. “My whole family is here. All my friends.”