Chapter One #4
This will be another blip: We’ll talk for a few minutes, Catarina will return and I’ll let her know I don’t think I’m going to be a good fit for the project, and then I’ll go back to my regularly scheduled programming in my normal life with my normal expectations.
“How are we even talking right now anyway?” I ask James, playing along. “Have you been listening to auditions all day?”
“No,” he answers. “And I have no clue. I was just fiddling with this soundboard and then there you were.”
“What do you want me to talk about?” I sigh, trying to make it sound as reluctant as possible, like I’m doing him a favor. Which Iam.
It must work, because there’s his dry, deep laugh again, speeding through time and space to settle here, in Tatum of all places, in my headset.
“We could start with your name.”
“Juniper,” I say without thinking.
For a split second, I worry that it’s going to out me, that we will have to visit the awkward “remember when” conversation after all.
But James Neely never bothered to learn my name in college, never asked, so our magical headphone conversation goes on, unburdened by something so trivial as the distant past.
“Not a very common name,” he says, and I’d probably prickle at that, but his tone is conversational, maybe even grateful that I’m talking at all.
This is an easy enough topic, a real crowd pleaser.
“Yeah. Mom was high on painkillers after having me, and she and Dad had been arguing about both my name and what kind of live tree they were going to get for baby’s first Christmas. I suppose she conflated the two, and here I am.”
There’s that laugh again, and it sounds like the kiss on my cheek—on Juliet’s—felt.
I ignore it, or I tell myself that I am ignoring it, which is not the same thing at all.
“So she was in favor of Juniper, I take it?” James asks.
“Yes, thank god. I could just as easily have been Douglas or Balsam if the roles were reversed and Dad was the one with an IV in his arm.”
“What’s your last name?”
I groan.
“You don’t want to know.”
There’s a squeak, like maybe he’s sitting and has leaned forward in a noisy chair.
“Tell me.”
If I had a nickel for every time he’s told me that…
“Green,” I say. “And yes, I realize my name is a Crayola color.”
“Oh my god,” he says. “That’s brilliant.”
“It really isn’t. Especially when I was cast as a literal tree in my elementary school play. I was mocked for weeks.”
“A play,” James says. “So you’re an actress, too?”
It’s like he toying with me, but I can tell from his tone that he has no idea who I am. I think James Neely is probably many things, but needlessly trifling is not one of them. If he knew who I was, he would have said…maybe.
The reality is, he doesn’t remember me because as small a blip as he was in my life, I probably didn’t even register in his.
“I’ve only ever acted in a non-tree capacity once,” I say. “Unless you count the podcast thing. I’m a podcast host. Well…was.”
I wonder if he can hear my reluctance to talk about the past tense, because his voice sounds almost gentle when he asks, “What made you want to start a podcast?”
Dangerous ground. I don’t want to remind him of who I am any more than I want him to remember me. I’ll have to tread lightly and be sure not to mention the primary interview question because surely he’d remember asking me that, blip or no blip.
“It kind of started as a joke,” I say.
“A joke?”
“I mean,” I amend, “it was never supposed to become anything. I think I was just feeling…lost, maybe? My mom and I wanted me to use my English degree to go into publishing and that didn’t work out, so I was working at a dead-end job for a chain of dental offices.
I think I still wanted to be creative and I knew everyone had a podcast, but one day I asked one of my co-workers about her favorite book and I learned so much more about her in that one conversation than I had in four years of seeing her every day in the office.
That and my obsession with Humans of New York.
Have you seen that page? This guy walks around New York interviewing and photographing random people, and the whole point is that we’re all differently the same, you know?
I thought I could do the same in podcast form, but with books. ”
“So you got people to talk about their lives by telling you about their favorite books?”
I nod, realize he can’t see me, and answer, “Yes.”
“A great premise if executed right,” he says. There’s a short pause. “Is it any good?”
I didn’t expect to laugh in this conversation, but it bursts out of me, sharp and loud.
“Would you expect me to tell you if it wasn’t ?”
He’s smiling, too. I can hear it in his voice, his tone ironic and a little dry when he says, “You don’t strike me as a liar.”
My laughter dies just as quickly as it came. I pick at my cuticle in the light of the dimmed iPad, trying to feel and sound like a cool girl, an unaffected girl who most definitely has not been living in her childhood bedroom because she’s still so, so floored by what happened.
“It was good,” I finally answer. “It really was. I mean, I think it had great promise, you know? The community was there. I’ve been told I have a half-decent voice for interviewing and reading and that kind of thing. The numbers were growing.”
“Was? Were?”
A sliver of blood shows up along my fingernail from where I’ve picked at it too much.
“I…I lost it,” I say. I shuffle my weight from foot to foot, stick the tip of my bleeding finger into my mouth while simultaneously using the other hand to wipe the screen. “I was stupid and I signed it away.”
There are more shifting sounds, like James has to physically move around, too, in order to process the information. I get it. I think I paced a rut in my apartment the week I was told the news.
“But how ?”
I shrug even though he can’t see me.
“I was young,” I say. “I mean, it was only three months ago, so I guess I am young, but I didn’t know how to look out for myself, you know?
I guess—shit, it sounds na?ve, but I didn’t think anyone was out to get me.
The acquisition meetings went well, the people seemed nice.
I thought they wanted me. Turns out they just wanted the name, the numbers, the podcast itself.
I was dispensable. I signed a shitty contract and they just… took it.”
He’s quiet, and his silence sounds like pity that I can’t bear, so I add, “I found out in April they were replacing me with a British Internet star who makes videos about Jane Austen. Cosette. Her literal name is Cosette Levine, like she’s a princess or something.”
He’s still not saying anything. I would wonder if he left out of sheer boredom, except I can hear the quiet sounds of his breathing picked up by the very nice microphone.
“And you know what doubly sucks?” I ask.
“What?”
“I used to love her videos. I’d watch them on my lunch breaks because she took you to all of these awesome parts of England and the Lake District and it just seemed too good to be true that they existed in nearly the same ways they had when Austen was alive.”
“And now?” James asks.
“And now what?”
Another squeak of the chair.
“What do you do now?” he asks.
Again, it’s not accusatory. He has no way of knowing how that question plagues my every choice, my every minute.
Because if I’m being honest, I’m no surer of what I’m supposed to be doing now at thirty-two than I was at five when teachers asked the same thing in kindergarten.
Less sure, actually, because back then “I want to help make books” seemed more or less like an obtainable, reasonable goal.
Now it feels like asking for too much, like a pipe dream.
I sigh.
“That’s why I’m here,” I say. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve never done anything like this before, I can tell you that much. I’ve never auditioned for anything ever in my life.”
“Which is how you became a tree,” James says.
“Which is how I became a tree,” I confirm. “I’m not even sure why I’m here, to be honest. I mean, the money from this project would be nice, but so would having an answer to the dreaded What do you do? question that doesn’t make me want to vomit or cry in a corner like a toddler.”
His answering snort is just as derisive. “I get it.”
I echo his snort.
“ You get it?” I let all the skepticism seep into my tone.
“Well,” he amends, “I understand the career conversation being a complicated one. Of all the terrible things to judge a person by, really.”
“ Right? ” I say, righteously riled. “Like, tell me about your favorite song from childhood. Tell me about your most treasured possession that’s worth the least amount of money. There are so many more interesting questions to ask other than, What do you do to make money to feed yourself? ”
Now his laugh is like toffee. I can’t explain how, other than I bought some at Trader Joe’s last week and ate it in one sitting and eating that was just like listening to this. Even muffled, it sounds like indulgence.
“I can see why your podcast did well,” he says. “You’re a natural. I bet no one could help but give you anything you asked of them.”
“That’s literally never happened.” I laugh, but my cheeks are warm with a blush all the same.
Somewhere in the last five minutes, the magic headphones have woven their spell. Or maybe it’s James doing the weaving.
“You sound—”
I startle when the door to my room opens and Catarina enters with apologies for keeping me waiting and then claps her hands in a let’s get started kind of way.
I hear a distinctive click through my headphones. James, I know, is no longer listening. The busted seam in time and space is being sewn closed once more.
“ So sorry about that, again,” Catarina says again. “Everything is sorted on our end.” She smiles at me and waggles her perfectly shaped eyebrows. “So…are you ready to read for me?”
I don’t hear James’s voice for the rest of the audition.