Alice in La La Land (6 page)

Alice had also bought a large packet of Wow chips. They were Shauna's favourite. Maybe Shauna would run lines with her if she supplied her with the snack? The packet boldly claimed to contain zero fat. Wow, thought Alice, I can't believe these chips don't make you fat! Wow! I can't believe these chips will sit undigested in your stomach for a year because they are made entirely from chemicals!

She turned into her driveway and sped down to the back parking lot. She was disappointed to note that Shauna's car wasn't there. Where could she be at 8.30 on a Monday night? Alice grabbed the cans of drink and the Wow chips and bounded up the back steps two at a time. As she opened
the door, she spied a large cat tearing out of her bedroom. Before she could stop herself, she'd pelted it with one of the cans. It hit the wall with such force that it popped open and sprayed its contents all over the floor. The cat halted, its curiosity overriding its instinct to flee. It slunk back to lap up the liquid. Apparently the drink was aerated.

Alice ran at the cat. 'Shoo, you bloody revolting creature!' She clapped her hands violently and the cat retreated to the darkness of the living room. She hurried down the hall to the office to print out her pages for the following day. Once inside the office, she switched on the light and logged on to retrieve her emails. She read Rebekah's email quickly. Great, she sighed, three auditions, all in really tricky locations. She began printing out the first audition, the first scene of which was six pages long. There appeared to be three scenes. Alice stood over the printer, scouring the pages to see how many lines of dialogue her character had per page. She was hopping from foot to foot in panic when she heard Shauna's keys clatter on the kitchen bench.

'Holy crap! What happened out here?' she yelled. 'I didn't know cats did fizzy pee pee!'

'Relax, it's energy drink,' called Alice, relieved to hear Shauna's voice. 'I'm about to clean it up, right after I've finished printing out these first twelve thousand pages of dialogue for my three auditions tomorrow.' She caught more pages as they spewed out of the printer.

'Oh my God, Alice, I am so hungry,' Shauna moaned, leaning on the office door to watch her. 'My agency said I'm looking too big in the hips so I'm starving. I hate myself right now. Are those Wow chips?'

'Your favourite,' said Alice, pleased her plan was coming together, 'and don't listen to those wankers at your agency; you're gorgeous the way you are.' The final page of the third audition rolled out of the printer and she began to put things in order. Her desperation grew as she looked at how much she had to learn overnight.

'Uh, Alice,' said Shauna. She had opened the packet and was nibbling the corner of a Wow chip as if it were part of a food ration that had to last a week, 'I also have a big audition tomorrow and was going to ask if you could help me . . . but I guess now you have all that work . . .'

'You have an audition? But, that's great . . .' She was pleased for Shauna. Who would want to endure the indignity of modelling swimsuits long term?

'They need a model slash actor,' Shauna explained, sawing at the air when she said the word 'slash'. She grinned with excitement. 'I really want this job, Alice.' She helped herself to two more Wow chips.

No shit, thought Alice.

'But don't sweat it, you're way too busy.' She started licking round the edges of one of the remaining chips in her palm.

'Here's what we're going to do,' decided Alice. 'It's now twenty-one hundred hours. We will spend the next hour confined to our quarters and reconvene here in the barracks at twenty-two hundred hours to run lines. Got that soldier?'

'Yes, sir.' Shauna saluted and scurried off.

'Wait. You'll be needing this.' Alice tossed her a can of Triple G. 'Oh, and I'll attend to that mess a bit later,' she added, as she stepped over the spilt energy drink and into
her room. She closed the door behind her and fiddled with the doorknob to check it was shut. The belts and necklaces jingled.

Alice sat on the end of the bed, exhaled loudly and looked down at her audition scenes. 'Right, let's get cracking,' she said, taking a small sip of Triple G. Her face screwed up at the taste but she persevered with another larger sip.

The first audition was at 10.30 am in Studio City. This was a made-for-television movie for the Hallmark Channel. There were three scenes in total and the first one fitted into the category of what Alice referred to as, 'This is My Special Place' scenes. A young man shows a young woman a special geographic spot – could be a waterhole or a corner of a field – and says this is the place he comes to think or feel or to remember his gran' daddy who passed. In this case, the boy with the sick mom shows his girlfriend the end of a pier. One of Alice's lines was, 'She must be real proud of you.'

Alice knew beggars couldn't be choosers but she really did not even want to try out for this job. For one thing, the character was barely out of her teens and Alice was pushing thirty. She knew her round face made her look a couple of years younger than she really was but this was taking things way too far. Second, she knew that decorative girlfriend parts such as this were not her strength. She didn't possess the calm beauty to carry her in such roles. She felt better suited to characters who actually had something to do, other than merely look serene and lovely and murmur words of encouragement to the male lead.

'Never mind, get on with it, girl,' she told herself, gritting her teeth and committing the first line to memory.

'Wait up, Billy, there's a hole in my shirtwaister.' Alice guffawed, inadvertently spraying the page of dialogue with fizzy green drink. What the hell was a shirtwaister?

Alice focused on the task and once she was satisfied she had memorised the lines of all three scenes, she moved onto the next script. Apparently, this one was an 'action comedy'. Alice took a slug of Triple G and chewed her fingernails. 'Right, okay, action comedy,' she said, willing herself to be reasonable. 'Fair enough, the two can be effectively combined.'

She paused to chug down the rest of the can of Triple G and wondered how this script had been greenlit. Its premise was that a mad billionaire pledges a million dollars to whichever team of desperate gamblers can finish first in a wild obstacle course across America. Alice's character was a young, gorgeous helicopter pilot who took part in the humiliating competition.

The audition scene involved Alice performing wild manoeuvres in an imaginary helicopter while talking about her unlucky love life. She wasn't looking forward to the audition. It was embarrassing enough just thinking about miming the helicopter controls. At least it was only one scene.

The third and final audition for the day involved about ten pages of dialogue. This was a flat-out comedy about a beauty pageant. It fell into the category Alice could best describe as 'comedies that are not funny'. It began to dawn on Alice how special the
Rough Beast Slouching
script was. She quickly looked over the pages of the beauty pageant
audition and realised that her character was highly skilled at baton-twirling and was also in her early twenties. In desperation, she returned to the helicopter pilot pages and began reading them out loud to get a feel for how she would do it.

'Uh, Alice,' said Shauna knocking on her bedroom door, 'it's ten minutes after you said to meet.'

'Coming,' sighed Alice, cutting short her rehearsal with the helicopter's invisible control panels. She had really only half-learned the scenes for the first audition and it was already ten past ten. She opened her door and stepped out into the hallway.

'You want to go first?' she offered.

'Oh, thanks, Alice,' said Shauna, absurdly grateful for the help.

They returned to the office and Alice sat down on the only chair. 'What's your audition for?' The chair was retractable and she spun round in it half-heartedly, trying to inject some levity into the proceedings.

Shauna handed her the pages. They were crinkled from excessive handling. 'It's called
Dorothy Navigator
.'

'
Dorothy Navigator
. That's catchy,' said Alice looking down at the first scene. 'What is it like,
Dora the Explorer
?'

'You're funny. Uh, no, it's more like
Lara Croft Tomb Raider
, but she's on rollerblades. Sort of like sci-fi slash adventure with a hot chick on wheels,' Shauna explained, sawing at the air with her palm.

'Okay, Dorothy, let's see what you got.'

'Uh, Alice,' said Shauna looking at her directly, her feet spread apart and legs stiff; she resembled a buxom foal. 'I haven't done acting classes in over a year so please just give me some hints, okay?' Her tone was very earnest and Alice
smiled at her. Shauna flicked her hair from one side of her
face to the other.

'Sure, that's fine,' Alice said reassuringly.

'So, let's go from there,' prompted Shauna, stabbing at a spot on the top page. She took a deep breath and began in a much quieter tone than normal.

'So, how'd he get it, Chops, he copped a taser in the back of the head. And you expect me to hang around and help?' she began.

'Hang on, Shauna,' interrupted Alice. 'What is Dorothy, a . . . transatlantic navigator?'

'Uh, no,' said Shauna, '. . . that's my English accent.'

'Oh, okay. Cool, let's start again.'

'So how'd he get it, Chops . . .' Shauna began again. Alice strained to hear the dialogue. Her accent was like nothing Alice had ever heard. It was Valley girl with crisp consonants but all the same vowel sounds. In no way did it sound English. Never mind, thought Alice, she was so gorgeous, perhaps it wouldn't matter.

'Uh, Alice,' said Shauna looking up when they had reached the bottom of the first page. 'Are you okay?'

'Fine, why?' She noticed her breathing was more rapid than usual but she'd attributed it to the quality of the dialogue.

'You have some red spots on your neck,' Shauna indicated, pointing down at her from her standing position.

'Oh my God!' Alice blurted, peering at the angry welts appearing on her chest. She could see them flowering before her very eyes. She began rapidly scratching at her face and could feel more bumps spring up under her fingertips.

'Let's just press on, shall we?' urged Alice, shaking her
head and choosing to ignore the tingling sensations. 'There's no time for this right now, so let's just ignore it,' she reasoned, pulling at her shirt to conceal the discolourations. 'From the same line again, please Shauna.' Alice was aware that they needed to get through this and onto her scenes before midnight.

'Okay, if you're sure,' mumbled Shauna. Despite screwing up her face in concern, she still managed to look pretty.

'So how'd he get it, Chops, he copped a taser in the back of the head,' she began again, this time with a little more energy. 'And you expect me to hang around and help?'

'Damn right, and that's nothing on what I'm gonna do to you.' Alice leapt up in a threatening manner, as per the suggestions in the script, and brandished an arm. The physical action made her feel hot all over.

'Have you forgotten the Gem?' said Shauna as Dorothy.

'You don't have it, Dorothy, so don't even pretend,' Alice replied, squinting at the script.

'Then what's this, Chops, a mirage or something?' Shauna dropped the arm that held the imaginary jewel. 'Alice, the spots are getting worse. Can you at least look in a mirror?' she pleaded, returning to her normal speaking voice and sounding extremely worried.

Alice's heart-rate felt even faster and a little worm was wiggling back and forth in her aorta. She stood up, huffing ragged breaths, and headed for the bathroom.

'Oh my God,' she muttered.

'I told you it was bad,' Shauna chided.

'No, there's puke in here. Green puke. I haven't even looked in the . . .'

Alice stopped talking when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Spittle had caught in the corners of her mouth and her pupils were dilated. They were a couple of marbles staring out from a mass of red splotches on her papery flesh. She looked a bit like the victim of a serial killer who hadn't quite finished the job yet. She cautiously opened her shirt to assess the situation. Not good, she concluded, appraising the crisscross of welts that seemed to spread from her throat to her middle. Her impulse was to scratch wildly like a dog.

'Stop!' yelled Shauna, appearing behind her in the mirror. 'You'll only make it worse.'

'Triple G,' Alice whispered. 'Can you be allergic to an energy drink?'

'Uh, I don't know, but I'd feel better if we went to a hospital.'

'Are you kidding? I can't afford that! I didn't get medical insurance.' Alice was wheezing now, and a goblin had taken up residence on her chest.

'Oh crap,' Shauna said, reaching for her handbag. 'I'll have to call Dr Dink.'

'Shauna, I'm going to lie down for a minute,' Alice mumbled, sliding onto the bathroom floor, taking care to avoid the cat vomit.

Shauna pulled out her phone and started dialling. 'Hey,' she sang, 'how are you sweetie? Nuh-uh, not on a school night! You are so naughty, Dinky!' she giggled. As she looked over at Alice, her smile dropped completely. She rolled her eyes. Alice thought that she'd make a good actress after all. She turned her back and Alice could hear her crank up her party-girl persona again. 'Uh-huh, sure,
I'll definitely be up for that Saturday . . . Uh, quick favour. My roomie is not well right now. Can an energy drink make you real sick?'

Alice suddenly noticed the welts on her legs. She was really starting to panic. What would happen when they reached her feet, the only part of her body that remained unblemished? Shauna walked back to her room and came out again with her unopened can of Triple G. She held the can close to her face and tried to pronounce the ingredients.

'Additive 136, flavour enhancers, guarana, glucose, ginkgo balboa, gooseberry extract, pseudoeffedrine and . . . huh?' She paused. 'Really?' she said. 'Okay . . . anti-what, sweetie?' she said nodding into the phone, 'Oh right . . . sure, I'm writing it down, and a tepid what, you dirty dog? No, Alice and I do not share a
room
we share an
apartment
. . . so just over the counter should fix it? Uh-huh . . . miss you too, see you Saturday,' she cooed, hanging up. 'What a douche bag.' She ran to pick up her car keys from the kitchen bench. Alice heard a thump.