Halley sits in the wooden chair from the desk beside the window. Usually, the chair is tucked neatly in under the desk, more from its disuse than the tenant’s tidiness. Tonight, however, it faces the window rather than the wall, as does the woman seated in it. Halley stares through the window at the night sky, her face looking hopelessly tired. One of the misfortunes of living so close to
Halley DeMallora, the chatterbox theater buff of Lincoln High School, looks at the dusk sky. At her outdoor sweet sixteen pre-birthday celebration, it’s just after seven, and all eyes are turned to the sky. Well, all except for Matt Jacobs’s, whose eyes are diverted toward the tall, redheaded Amber Porter, one of Halley’s friends of five years. Last month, she and James Warren broke up, quite amicably at that, and there’s that glint of interest in Matt’s eye. Halley is unsuccessful in hiding a smile as she notices this. Many of their friends can attest that Matt and James have shared a long friendship. But, hey, who doesn’t love a scandal? Halley looks up at the sky, searching for tonight’s planned performance. Two arms wrap around her and the deep voice of her father asks, “See anything, Starlight?” Halley spins around and smiles at her father, his warm eyes peering through his round bifocals and his equally warm smile displayed under his graying moustache.
“No, can’t see her, yet,” the button-nosed daughter answers.
“Hmm, so she’s a female now,” he replies, with obviously feigned curiosity.
“Well, she wouldn’t be named Halley if she weren’t,” Halley replies as if on cue, with false indignity in her voice. This is actually one of her father’s jokes. When she was young, he had told her that for her sixteenth birthday, he was buying her a shooting star and naming it after her. Of course, years later she realized that the “shooting star” was in reality a comet named hundreds of years ago after a British astronomer. And the name was said the way her name was often mispronounced, as ‘Hay-lee.’
* * *
Halley yawns herself awake, surprised to have woken up without the alarm. She immediately realizes this could mean trouble. Violently, she flips over to view the clock, already dreading the moment, and cringes as she realizes the time. The clock continues to display the time as apathetically as ever. Cursing, she undresses and redresses, ignoring the open window, vetoing make-up, and grabbing her shoes on the way out. After locking herself out as she leaves, she realizes that she has grabbed a pair of high heels. I’ll pay for that. Knowing she won’t have time to call the landlord to open her door to retrieve more appropriate shoes, she rushes down the hall.
It gets worse from here. Her boss refused to let her have an extended lunch break she had asked for, since she arrived late, if only by ten minutes. Ten minutes plus no make-up and bed hair, he justifies. Halley abandons the Southern accent if only to keep her voice moderately cheery while waiting tables. Most of the time, she’s unsuccessful in keeping out the hint of strain. Luckily, she’s long since learned to smile on cue.
She moves to her next booth, where a man around her age is sitting. In one hand, he is holding a napkin taut, and with the other, he is scribbling… doodling, it appears. So intent in his artwork, he doesn’t look up at Halley stands there waiting, shifting her weight from foot to foot, doing whatever she can to alleviate the pain in the arches of her feet. “May I help you?” Halley finally asks as politely as possible, donning the Southern accent, finding herself with the energy to muster it after not getting an impatient order. For a waitress, she finds herself waiting very little in a metropolis of busybodies and clock-watchers. The man looks up, pulling his hair behind his ears. It reaches mid-neck and is several shades darker than hers is. He also has a thin goatee. “Sorry,” he says, stuffing the napkin in the pocket of his black jacket resting on the seat beside him. “Coffee, please. Decaf?”
After a pause, she asks, “Cream and sugar?” She immediately knows this man is not to a regular. Protocol for ordering coffee is preferred caffeination first, add-ins second, specifically type of cream, then sugar, and then special requests.
“French vanilla and, uh, two scoops,” he answers, unsurely, but with a sense of friendly familiarity in his eyes.
“You got it,” she replies comfortingly, feeling the natural cheer return to her voice. Most customers, while not overbearing, have a strong confidence to them when ordering. Halley realized, after a couple of months working as a waitress, that people subconsciously take advantage of the fact that waitresses are pretty low on the food chain. This young man’s requests were almost questions. He used “please.” And he had an unusual lack of a
She lays the steaming mug on the table. He has grabbed a fresh napkin and has begun to doodle on it. Strange habit, Halley muses. He suddenly notices the mug, almost as if he’d once again zoned out. He pauses, lays the pen down, takes the mug, and audibly says, “Thanks, Halley.”
Halley inhales to talk, preparing to correct him on the pronunciation of his name, but realizes that he hasn’t mispronounced it. She instead states, “You’re the first in two weeks. And in months to get it on the first time.”
“Huh?” He mutters, but corrects himself, “Excuse me?”
“You’ve pronounced my name right, sir. Nobody does.” Halley shifts her weight to one leg, enjoying the break.
The man looks at her, briefly with… disappointment? she wonders. “Oh, I learned the first time,” he says, smiling coyly.
Halley does a double take, “Uh…”
“I must look different. Christopher VanDrey.” He extends his hand, eyeing her.
As realization floods her, Halley apologized with overdramatic mortification, “Oh, Christopher, I’m sorry, I thought you looked familiar and…” At this she takes his hand, by instinct.
“Hailey, are you socializing again?” nags a rather wide man in a cheap work suit complete with an off-yellow tie. He stands behind Halley, who opens her mouth but nothing comes out of it.
Christopher replies for her in a very confident, matter-of-fact tone, “You kidding me, sir? This is one of the most attentive waitresses that I have ever had. I think she deserves a raise.” Though stunned, Halley catches the Southern accent laced in his voice, which she bets he has overemphasized.
“Alright,” he grumbles as he walks away, eying Halley, who is still statue-still.
“Thank you,” Halley says meekly, trying her best to relieve her tension. She now understands the man’s behavior. Christopher is a high school friend of hers, originally from
“Fastest thinking I’ve ever done,” he comments, “Did you really get a raise?”
Halley humphs, “Nah, if I’m lucky, I got my two-hour unpaid lunch break back… which I need, because I have an audition.”
“So you haven’t given up the dramatic arts for the… service arts.”
“No,” she says with restraint.
“What time do you get off?”
“Are you…” Halley replies, with a smirk.
Christopher holds his hands up, “No, don’t worry, I’m engaged. I wanna catch up, and when you ask someone of the opposite sex…”
“Yeah. But you know, I always kinda suspected—”
A loud beeping interrupts her. Christopher turns off his watch alarm, and sighs with disappointment. “I gotta get back to work. Thanks for the coffee.” He drops a five on the table and gets up. “Sorry to cut it short.”
He briskly walks toward the exit. She calls out, “Six-thirty.”
He nods, turning around, “By the way, love the accent.” She throws her pencil at him. He skillfully catches it and throws it back. She snatches it out of the air and puts it behind her ear, with nearly as much grace. He exits.
As Halley walks toward the next booth, a coworker walks by her. “So, finally got a date?”
“He’s engaged.”
“Girl, that ain’t somethin’ I’d be bragging about,” she states as she walks away. Halley rolls her eyes and goes to her next table, passing the chalkboard sign with “coffee $1.69” scrawled across it.
* * *
Halley rubs her hands together, trying to rid herself of sweaty palms, and pacing on the sidewalk outside the off-off-Broadway theater. She sashays her long hair, pulling it back, hoping for a natural look. It turns out somewhat… frazzled. She pulls all of it behind her ears, defeated. She takes a large breath and enters the building. In the lobby, a woman in her forties takes Halley’s name.
Entering, Halley plops herself in one of the seats before consciously erecting her body and fixing her posture. She pulls her elbows back, trying to relieve the tension in her shoulders. Her head sways and turns, yearning to relax the tight muscles in her neck. Her hands graze over her earlobes, wanting to push her hair behind her ears again, but her hair is still in place from when she pulled it back outside. She practices a quick toothless smile. It feels unnatural and the smile disappears in place of a brief grimace. She trips over her tongue just thanking the woman passing out the script excerpts. Halley, her own agent, knows that this director, Martín Ben-Harvey, started as an improv director. For this reason, he has the annoying habit of giving his potential performers very little time to practice. Though it would be unfair to call him a sadist… never mind, no it wouldn’t.
Halley quickly scans the script. She learned the first time she auditioned for Martín that she needed to prepare with what time she was given. Thank heavens she walked out on that audition for an unscripted comedy show which she mistook for a comedic production. “Hailey DeMallora?”
Halley has gotten used to responding to both names.
“Okay, Miss DeMallora,” Ben-Harvey starts, as Halley stands on stage, alone and under the bright lights. At least he gets my last name right now. At age twelve, Halley once asked her dad why he hadn’t changed it to something easier to say, like DeMallory, or even Mallory. He responded, chuckling, by saying that she could change it when she grew up. It was several hours later until she realized how it sounded when spoken aloud: Halley Mallory. I have got to adopt a stage name.
“Hailey, I would like you to play the part of
“’Kay,” she mumbles and breathes in.
No comments:
Post a Comment