Shooting Star: Chapter 6

Halley steps into her small dressing room behind the stage. It was a good opening night, almost completely sold out. After four months of tireless rehearsal, the play went on with barely a hitch. Her costar did mess up one line, which made him forget the rest, but he did a thinking pause worthy of a soap opera. The director, who had the unfortunate habit of chewing his nails, drew blood and yelped. Thank goodness for the soundproof set.

There is a knocking at Halley’s door. “Yes,” she calls out.

A man’s voice answers, “Miss Malore, there’s a man wanting to see you. He’s says he’s a friend.”

“Donny, anyone can say that,” Halley says, as if rehearsed.

“He says he’s—”

Halley runs to the door, opening it a crack. “Tell him I’m flattered, but very busy right now.”

“Yes, ma’am. He gave you this.”

Halley takes a piece of thick paper. In reality, Halley would love to meet an adoring fan. But she had been given specific directions about dealing with this kind of thing. Just in case it could be an adoring stalker, one is supposed to refuse to see someone into his or her own dressing room. The stagehands are trained to do this for the performers, and the fact that Donny was even asking means that he was likely bribed, an indication that the fan may have less than honorable intentions. Halley looks at the paper anyway. It’s a strange type of calligraphy. She quickly realizes it’s her stage name, but she doesn’t understand the design.

Halley tosses it by the corner onto her makeup table. It lands askew. Something catches Halley’s eyes. She walks over to it. In the left, top corner are some initials, written up‑side‑down. Finding this an unusual place for a signature, she flips the sign over so that the initials are right-side-up… and so is her monogram, even after turning it over.


She runs to the door, “Donny! Let him in! Let him in!”

Donny runs to her, “But you said—”

“Donny!”

“But they—”

“Go get them!” she pronounces, not an ounce of doubt in her voice.

Donny, flustered, sprints runs away. A few moments later, Halley hears a familiar voice, “I knew it was gonna take her a few minutes to figure it out.”

But the source of the voice is not who runs in. A woman with cherry red hair runs in.

“Amber?” Halley asks as she caught in a crushing hug by the woman.

“Halley, you were wonderful!”

Halley untangles herself from Amber’s grip. “Amber, what are you doing here?”

Almost choking on her tongue, Amber replies, “I came to the show… and what is with the new name?”

“That’s half my invention and half… his,” she comments tilting her head to see behind her.

“Hey,” Christopher says lightly, his dark hair slicked back. The other man with unruly black hair follows him.

“Christopher!” he hugs him, and then turns to other man in glee, “C.J.!” She hugs him, too.

C.J. says to her, “Yeah, Chris here says he could get tickets to this show in New York and we jumped at the chance. He forgot to mention you were in it.”

“Halley, you’re famous!” Amber cries.

Modestly giggling, Halley replies calmly, “I’m not famous. I have a leading role in off-Broadway play which had a good opening night. The plays only secure for like a month. I’ll have to do a lot better for a lot longer until I’m famous.”

Amber insists, “No, you’re famous, accept it.” She’s practically shaking.

“Okay, then. I’m getting the impression I can’t do otherwise.” Halley turns to her table and grabs the sign, “By the way, Christopher, thanks for getting the guy who does these things to make me one.”

C.J. comments, “‘the guy who does them?’ Halley, Chris does these.”

Halley looks insulted, “Christopher!”

Christopher defends, “Modesty is not a sin.”

“Neither is pride!”

There is a brief pause.

“By the way, Christopher, where’s Laura?”

“She couldn’t come. Sorry. You shouldn’t have planned opening night on a teacher in‑service day.”

“Yeah, ‘cause, you know, I pick the dates and times and everything myself.” Halley, still a bit overwhelmed, continues, “I don’t think I need to ask, but was I good?”

“Absolutely, incredibly, wonderfully…” Amber stops, running out of adverbs.

“Your opinion has been duly noted,” Halley tells her friends, “Guys?”

“Yeah, Amber’s right, Halley, you were awesome,” C.J. says in a calm tone.

“Yeah, it was very much getting back to your roots,” comments Christopher, with a knowing smile.

“Speaking of which, what’s going on in your corners of the world?” Halley asks.

Amber talks first, “Well, I’m a budget analyst for a company called Merchann & Chiam. It’s a lot of work, but you get to rub shoulders with all the big-wigs.”

C.J. goes next, “I’m a computer engineer, most mercenary work.”

Christopher smiles, “If you must know, I’m a programmer for OmniTech.”

“And your boss?” Halley prompts.

“Lateral transfer at the end of the month. I’m up for the promotion.”

“Good luck.”

“And you, Miss Malore?” Christopher asks.

Halley thickens her New Yorker accent, “Well, I am currently playing the role of Cecily Cardew in the Jean Cocteau Repertory production of The Importance of Being Earnest.”

In a reporter’s tone, C.J. questions, “And how are you enjoying that.”

“Oh, it’s absolutely extraordinary fun, but to tell you the truth, I miss waitressing a tiny bit. You meet so many great people.”

And all the four friends break into laughter.

* * *

The Jean Cocteau Repertory is located at Bouwerie Lane Theater, at the northwest corner of the intersection of Bowery and 2^nd Streets, less than a quarter mile from Broadway. It is a small, white, two-story building, surrounded by a cast-iron veranda, supported by tall, nondescript white columns, much like the surrounding buildings. On either side of the tall wooden doors, hand two blue-background announcement boards. Hanging from the veranda, is a miniature theater marquee, an eyesore which rather ruins the austere décor of the block. It announces:

The Importance of Being Earnest

Starring
Dennis F. Perry
Arthur Holmes
Hilary Daphne
C C. Malore

The sign is falling into disrepair, resulting in incomplete letters on every line due to frequent burned out lights, including the first period of “C. C. Malore.” Quiet suddenly, the light representing the second period pops, sending a glowing piece of filament flying into the air. The light fades away, and it is invisible before it can be seen to descend.

Shooting Star: Chapter 5

Halley lies on her bed, eyes peacefully shut, flat on her back, her head turned toward the left side of her bed, away from the clock and toward the adjacent wall with the window. The clock displays 5:58 in the monotonous red digits. From outside the window, a golden light slowly enters the room. Halley eyelids quiver then open briefly. She inhales, her drowsiness leaving quickly. She looks to the clock, only a minute left until time to wake up.

Usually, Halley would take the opportunity to attempt to sleep for the remaining fraction of minute, but today, her hand darts to the clock, turning it off before it sounds. She had slept hard last night, she realizes as she pops her neck. She hops out of bed silently. She opens the closet door and seems to ponder over her outfit before retrieving the usual work wear. She passively closes the window blinds, removes her sleep shirt, and dresses at a casual pace.

In the bathroom, the brunette pulls up her hair, and makes the everyday bun out of it. She could remember a time when “down” was for normal days and “up” was for the more elegant occasions. Now, to have her shoulder-length hair sprawled over her shoulders is a rare pleasure. She applies the hint of blush, the barely-noticeable eye shadow, and pulls her coral red tube of lipstick, twisting it up, the tip long since smoothed over. She stares at it for a second, before twisting it back into the container, and throwing it carelessly behind her. It lands noiselessly on the rough carpet in the hall. She opens the medicine cabinet, grabs a black make-up bag, and starts to root through it before coming up with another lusterless golden tube. Returning the bag to the shelf, and closing the mirrored door, she removes the cap and twists the tube, revealing a vibrant orange-red color somewhere between the color of mango and grapefruit. She applies it and stares at herself breathlessly. The touches of once invisible blush now blaze like softly glowing embers against her cheeks. Her eyes water just looking at herself. Halley removes the hair pin and lets her hair fall around her head. She shakes it out and once again grabs the whole mass of it with one hand and with her other hand, she feels her temple and moves it up to her hairline, reaching her middle finger in and pulling away a thin lock of hair, which she allows to lie against her face, about an inch from her eyes. Tilting her head, but not smiling, she spins her hand and stabs her hair back into a bun.

She stares at herself for a moment, and then takes a peak at the digital clock by her bedside. Ironically, she has fixed herself up four minutes quicker than on normal days, when she rushes through the ordeal. Time has miraculously slowed down for her, if only a little.

Turning away from her reflection and aching the slightest bit because of it, she strides down the short hallway to the outside door and taking only a passing glance at the calendar.

* * *

Halley approaches a table and smiles politely, “What would like, guys?” in a normal accent, without any hint of the South and very little North. The two twenty-something males are still undecided. Halley walks away, giving them a minute. She’s had thousands of customers, but these two seem familiar. She tried for two months to remember all her customers at least by sight. This was too difficult, so she tried to remember only the ones who hit on her, so she could be icy, but even this select group became too large for her memory. She settled for a system of continual amnesia long ago.

“Dude,” one of pair says to his companion, “wasn’t that the waitress you hit on last time?”

“You know, it’s been a couple months. Yeah, it does look like her, but she’s different. Besides, the other one had to have been from Georgia or something, judging by her accent. This one’s from around here. And I’ll bet you anything she’s taken.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The way she carried herself. Waitresses are low-income, so they’re not getting their confidence from their money. That means they have to get it from their boyfriends. I know girls, and they rarely produce their own confidence. Trust me.”

Halley returns, “You guys decided yet?”

The first guy opens his menu, “Yes, I’d like…”

* * *

Halley exhales, still staring intently at the total stranger that she just expressed her utmost distaste. Her eyes squint against the harsh stage lights coming from her right.

“Okay,” a voice comes from the audience, “that was wonderful. Dennis, I like your charisma. We’ll keep in touch. Miss Malore, I was intrigued by your performance…”

* * *

Halley breathes quickly, her nervousness clearly visible even in the extreme low light. She brushes off her large, puffy skirt, shifting from one foot to the other, trying to let the heat escape from under her many petticoats. She leans in, straining to hear voices, and nods. “Okay,” she whispers to herself, “almost time.”

Suddenly it becomes very dark; pitch black even, and Halley runs blindly into the abyss. Hands grab her from behind and sit her down in a chair. The light returns and Halley finds herself seated at an outdoor table complete with a tea set and a place of English muffins, looking quite unsurprised. A woman, dressed similarly, comes upon her, and the two initiate a conversation.

“…if I may speak candidly—” the woman asks her, mid-way through their rather haughty discussion.

“Pray do! I think that whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.” Halley replies with a twenty-four carat smile, oblivious to her archaic language.

But the woman says something wrong and hatred fills Halley’s face.

A tall man with unruly black hair comes upon her and she embraces him, and then becomes disgusted with him moments later after a startling revelation from her new and, frankly, former acquaintance. There is some angered dialogue and Halley’s companion finally states, “Neither of us is engaged to be married to any one.”

“It is not a very pleasant position for a young girl suddenly to find herself in. Is it?” Halley replies.

One can scarcely notice now how out of place Halley and her companions are. The clothes they wear are centuries old, and the furniture, undeniably made for the outdoors, rests on a black wood floor rather than a field of green grass. Most noticeably, a conversation so personal should have been greatly hindered by the thousands of eyes watching them from their plush, scarlet seats, arranged in sloping rows and curving in almost a semicircle around the small box where the scene is taking place.

Three people in this audience look onto this scene with exceptional interest. These three sit in the upper tier, second row, slightly off-center toward stage right. All three are in their early twenties and in formal attire. The first man, contently smiling, has light olive skin, dark brown eyes, and longish black hair, all of it pulled behind his ears and lying against the back of his neck. The second man, casually smiling, also has black hair, but it’s shorter, jet black, and unruly, but in an organized unruliness, if that’s at all possible. The third person is a woman, her hair deeply cherry red, straight, and falling perfectly to her shoulders, a hair clip in the shape of a white blossom holding the left side behind her ear. Her white-gloved hands cover her mouth, gleefully smiling, and her eyes are in teary delight.

Chapter 6

Shooting Star: Chapter 4

Halley walks out of the diner after the completion of her second shift. Her eyes instantly fall toward a man sitting on the bench, reading a newspaper. Halley has never been able to pinpoint it, but thanks to her years of acting, she guesses, she has a sixth sense about people: she can tell when they are only pretending to do something. Plus, something’s a little too familiar about that dark hair.

“Excuse me, sir, may I trouble you for the time?” she asks the reader, in her best British accent.

Christopher drops the paper, and almost to himself, states, “Six-forty-seven, and thirty-one seconds… 33… 34… Man, I love digital watches.” He turns to her, “It also updates through time zones, knows the current moon phase, and will also give me a compass bearing, which for some reason always happens to be 322 degrees.” He nods sympathetically.

“For an engaged man, you spend a lot of time waiting for waitresses in diners.”

Leaning back, he says casually, “I’m in New York City for a job, which doesn’t start until Thursday. All I’ve had to do all day is yell at muggers.”

“Ew. You get swiped?”

“Nah. They are all cowards. It’s amazing the kind of looks you can get when you point and yell at them.”

“What?”

Christopher shrugs, “I was watching Oprah and it was a segment on how to survive in urban areas.”

“Oprah?” Halley asks, crossing her arms, and giving him a look.

“That’s all that was on in my hotel room, except for that movie parody,” he says pensively, getting up from the bench.

“What was wrong with the movie parody?” she wonders, as Christopher stands beside her.

“My hotel room,” he repeats, “What kind of parody do you think it was?”

A brief pause, then, “Oh, I hear those are really entertaining.”

“You eat food, right?” he replies, flatly changing the subject

“Yeah, I’m starving. Will you be joining me?” she asks flatly.

“Sure, it’ll be my treat.”

“Whoo, in that case, let’s upgrade. I know this great place to get hamburgers.”

“Hamburgers are an upgrade?”

“I live in New York, where you have street vendors and then you have rooftop cafés. You can only be so choosy in either direction.”

* * *

Between bites of hamburger, Halley gets out, “Well, it turns out that Constance Merriam is actually supposed to be an elderly woman from Belgium, not a young uppity British girl.”

Christopher cringes, “So, I take it you didn’t get the part.”

“Nope, but I’ve got another audition in two days. Wish me luck.” She crosses her fingers.

“Course. So, still doing the acting thing?”

“Well, I’m doing a lot of the trying-out thing, not as much acting thing as I’d like.”

“Hard occupation. Anyway, I’ve got a job in two days. Wish me luck.”

“Luck. You never told me what you did.”

Christopher smiles, “No, I didn’t, did I? I’m a computer programmer.”

“Figures,” Halley groans, remembering how her high school friends raved about the calculator programs that Christopher had written that allowed them to pass their geometry exams, “Who do you work for?”

Christopher reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a business card, and launches into an elaborate spiel. “Company called OmniTech. Started three years ago by some Microsoft ‘early retirees,’ if you catch my drift. Problem is, to get hired by Microsoft, you have to be the best. Their ‘corporate overhead’ is still in the top 1% of technicians in the country. Well, they started OmniTech and have been the trickiest little devils in preventing Microsoft from having a monopoly on the market. The US should thank us.”

Halley, oblivious, is staring at the business card. She comments, “I like the logo. There’s something about it…”












Defeated, Christopher blankly replies, “Symmetry.” With that, he gently takes the card and drops it face up on the table, tapping the corner lightly. It rotates slowly and Halley’s eyes light up. He tells her, “It’s called an ambigram. The first employee they hired after founding was caught doodling one of these. They took him off his current project for two weeks to design a new logo. Extra fifty bucks on his next paycheck.”

“That’s cool.”

“I’ll relay the message.”

“So,” starts Halley, “tell me about this fiancée of yours.” Getting in touch with her inner woman, Halley even puts the French accent on the word, “fiancée.”

“Her name’s Laura Dale. I met her at Emory. She’s an elementary school teacher, ESL.”

“Good for her. ¿Español? I presume.”

“Por supuesto. Nunca me casaría con una mujer que no hablara español,” Christopher responds in perfect Spanish.

“Ack, it’s been awhile since I’ve had a class. I heard ‘nunca’ and ‘casar.’ Something about never marrying… a woman who doesn’t speak Spanish, I’m guessing.”

“Perfecto,” Christopher exaggerates the accent.

“¡Basta! I like Spanish as much as the next person, but one of your idiosyncrasies is going overboard with it, especially with non-fluents. You did it all the time in LHS.” Halley suddenly notices she is getting several looks and leans in. “They’re looking at us.”

“It’s probably you. Most of them don’t know that ‘basta’ means ‘enough’ and not… yeah.”

“Whoops.” Halley starts laughing, and is soon joined by Christopher. They continue to do so for several minutes. Half-recovered, she asks, “So, what was I thinking? Was I? Yeah, I was. Stage name; do you think I need one?”

After a final chortle, Christopher replies, “It wouldn’t hurt. But I thought a rose by any other name smelled as sweet.”

“True, but does a ‘rossee’ smell as sweet?”

Christopher glides his hand over his head with the accompanying “whoosh” whistle. He eyes her.

Halley giggles, “My name is mispronounced.”

Christopher interrupts, “Ah, the lovely Hailey... Deh… Mah… lore… uh…?”

“Yeah. I thought I’d start with something…” and with hand motions, “…regal… British, kind of… I like Constance.”

Christopher nods. “Constance’s pretty. Where d’you think of it?”

Halley shoves it off, “Call it inspiration. I’d also like to simplify my last name to… ‘Malore.’”

Christopher feigns being impressed, and then says with his best English accent. “Constance Malore. Sounds like a 19-year-old lovesick British chick from the 1800s. Your specialty.” He gets a fry thrown at him, but Halley can’t argue. In her tenure as a young actress at Lincoln High School, she had a knack for getting parts with European accents, or lovesick females, or characters from earlier centuries, or all of the above, really. But she got it down to an art. And the drama teacher, Mr. Carnegie, loved her to death for it.

“So, what do you think it needs?”

In an almost connoisseur-ish way, he replies, “It’s wonderful, but Constance Malore has too much of a pastel feel. Even Halley DeMallora has more fullness. It needs… tang.”

“Tang. Tang is good,” Halley comments, not hiding a smile, “What’s a tangy name?”

After a few seconds of thought, Christopher replies, “Something to match Electra?” He pauses for a few seconds, then vocally presents, “Carmen.”

Halley rolls her eyes, “Very funny, Christopher.”

“Constance Carmen Malore,” he recites, seemingly ignoring her lack of enthusiasm.

Halley perks up, and repeats it, with a thick Spanish accent. “Constance Carmen Malore…” she says passionately, “I like it. It’s tingly.”

“Tingly.” Christopher repeats deadpan.

“If anything to get my name right.”

“I know how that feels.”

“How do they get ‘Christopher VanDrey’ wrong?”

“‘Van-dree’ ‘Vanderay’ Varendy’ I got once. ‘Chris.’”

“Wait a second. I was in a bunch of your classes. You always said you didn’t mind ‘Chris.’”

“Eh, I appreciate it when people use the full form.”

“I do it out of convenience to discern between you and all the Chrises that we went to school with. Who else does three syllables?”

“Laura. My parents. My good friend, Diana Owler.”

This catches Halley off-guard, “The famous writer? The one who made the rounds on all the talk shows just last week?”

“Yeah, she went to Lincoln High with us for a year. So, you’ve read her books?”

“I haven’t had time to read a book in months. In the Sunday paper, I read the comics, the advice columns, and audition notices.” At this, Halley sighs heavily before smiling again, “Know anyone else famous?”

“Besides the world-renowned Constance Carmen Malore, nope.”

Halley laughs and takes a sip of her milkshake. “Continue to call me Halley.”

“Works for me.”

After a moment, Halley comments softly, “You know, my dad used to tell me that they named Halley’s Comet after me. I thought it was a sign that I, too, one day would be a star. That was before I realized it was pronounced the other way. I don’t know how this’ll play out.”

Christopher is quiet for a moment, “Halley, I don’t want to burst your bubble. Or whatever the opposite of bursting a bubble is, but it is Halley’s Comet,” he remarks, pronouncing ‘Halley’ with the short ‘a.’ “The astronomer, who was British, his name was Edmond Halley, like your name. Saying it with the long ‘a’ is simply an American mistake. Maybe it had to do with the warping of the British accent into the American accent. But it’s Halley.”

Halley has a bemused look, her eyebrows lowered, “You joshing me?”

“No, I’m not ‘joshing’ you. I’m guessing that’s the New Yorker version of ‘pulling my leg.’”

“Sorry, it’s something that was in my read-through today. It’s Halley?”

“Yep,” he replies deliberately.

Halley sits back in the booth, with a comforting sense of awe on her face, “Awesome. I mean, it’s not a completely profound thing, but… I’m glad you told me. How’d you find out?”

“Actually, it was kinda ‘cause of you. I remember you joking that it was really Halley’s Comet at school one day. Well, I looked it up in a British-origin dictionary, and it had the pronunciation for it with the short ‘a’ first, then the long ‘a’ as a secondary pronunciation. This was really the first time I got to tell you.”

“Thanks.” Halley looks at her watch. “I gotta get home. I have work in the morning. Listen, if you’re ever in New York again, visit me. Bring Laura. I’d like to meet her. Look me up.”

“If I don’t see your name in lights.”

“Yeah,” she replies, distant, sinking back into her seat, suddenly oblivious to the time.

“Halley, you’re gonna be a star. It’s not about talent,” Christopher immediately realizes his mistake, and corrects himself, “It’s not all about talent. You’re talented, yes. Immensely. And you have a burning love for acting. You’re gonna make it. You just have to find the right gig. Something that screams the way you are.”

“The way I am? Christopher, the roles you’ve seen me play are the naïve, lovesick girls. Granted, I was wonderful in them,” she states, with a coy smirk, which quickly vanishes, “but I want something better than this. I want to grow as an actress. Yeah, I love acting with a passion, but it’s not translating. You like computer stuff, and you’ve got a great job. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is the way our respective occupations are. I was hired to OmniTech right out of college because I interned at Microsoft, and I was under one of the guys who founded our company. Mr. Carnegie and your college acting professors aren’t professional directors. You haven’t made a name for yourself. About growing as an actress, Halley, you have to grow from somewhere. Halley, I cannot stand the way my team leader wants to program our projects. I think my ideas are a thousand times better, but I don’t know how to be a team leader. I hate salesmanship; I hate politics; but those are the kinds of things I need to have a grasp on before I move up the ladder. When Mr. Carnegie gave you the lead parts, it was because you proved yourself to him.”

“So you’re saying I should do the quirky British chick thing again?” she asks without enthusiasm.

“It’s a suggestion, from a computer programmer. I don’t know much about acting. I got out of it in the seventh grade. I’m just soliciting advice.”

“Thanks,” she replied in a rather feeble voice. She sits back in the booth, silent, and looks out the window, just staring. At first, her eyes try to play a connect-the-dots games with the stars, outlining her name, but she fails. She then looks to see the words “Constance Carmen Malore,” but quickly realizes that there aren’t enough stars in the New York sky for that. She then tires of stationary stars and searches the pitch-black horizon again.

“She won’t be back for another sixty-nine years, Halley.”

“Who?” Halley replies instantly, but smiles at the joke. Her father called it a “she,” too. “I wouldn’t mind any shooting star.”

Christopher points at the window, “There’s one.”

Halley’s head jerks toward the left, searching the night sky, but it’s still.

“You’re looking too far.”

Too far?, Halley thinks, still searching the sky. The night sky is two-dimensional, you can look too far in the horizontal or vertical directions, or too far toward some compass bearing, but “too far?” She turns toward Christopher, her face highly skeptical. He continues to point. She looks again, but quickly resides, and retracts her eyes, just staring at her translucent reflection in the pane.

And realization hits her again. Chuckling, she replies, “Christopher, how’d you get so smart?”

“I’ve always been smart, but how did I learn to talk like the old man on the mountain? Throughout high school, I stayed pretty sheltered and somewhat reclusive.” Halley smiles, remembering the shy but kind boy that never missed one of her plays. Halley always saw something in his eyes, burning to say something, but he didn’t. Their mutual friends told her that Christopher had the knack of saying just the right thing to get a whole group laughing every once in a while, but Halley had missed that pleasure. A friend named James Warren had one said that Christopher was going to write a book called What the Little Bird Saw, which would be a reflection of Christopher’s years of keen and silent observations. She had to agree. Christopher always seemed to know the general details about people, especially immediately picking up on people’s birthdays, including her own.

“However, in college…” Christopher continued. Halley was surprised about how much had gone through her head before the brown-haired man started his next sentence. She’d learned in her Oral Communication class that the human brain could think at roughly 400-500 words per minute. “…I found the courage to dive in head first in the Social Ocean, and I never was able to get out of the water. I cannot tell you how many all-night conversations I had with girlfriends or best buds. Conversation for me was something that only happened by grace when I was younger, but I got a lot of practice in college.”

Halley just smiled, too tired to respond. New York life had become too lonely for her tastes in the last few months. The apartment complex she lived in rented out single apartments for less than half of double. If she had the money, she’d gladly pay the difference just to have someone to talk to during the day. Then again, the apartment was really just for sleeping in. With her busy schedule, she’d still be seeing more of her coworkers than a roommate. Though, a roommate would be nice.

* * *

Halley’s Comet was first discovered in 240 b.c., over two thousand years before any other major comet. It is arguably the most famous. Named after Edmund Halley after he predicted it would show up Christmas Night 1758. He died before he saw his prophecy come true. It completes a cycle every seventy-six years, more or less, the second most infrequently-seen comet, just behind the Herschel-Rigollet with an orbit of 155 years. What it lacks in frequency, it makes up in proximity, coming within 2.1 million miles of the Earth during its perihelion, giving it the record of third-closest astral anomaly in recorded astrological history. The nucleus of the comet is a mere ten by five by five miles. She has a retrograde orbit, revolving in the opposite direction of the planets.

Though far away, the tiny ball of light burns furiously, leaving a long trail of similarly white light, though not near as bright. Halley, who is sitting on her father’s leg, can scarcely breathe. The comet glides near the western horizon. Within a few weeks, it will be gone, left for Europe and Africa to view its splendor. But for now, it’s Halley’s comet.

Huge goosebumps cover Halley’s skins, especially her bare arms, but unlike the rest of the bare-armed crowd, Halley is motionless, not rubbing her arms like her chilly guests. Her breath is shallow and spread out. I can almost hear Halley’s heart beating fifteen feet away. It sounds not like a heavy thumping, but a dull, full roar. From my point of view, I see the comet’s light reflecting in her pupils. Everyone is entranced by the comet, but no one more than she is. I have already absorbed the comet’s beauty on my own birthday, at 2:05 AM, so my enchantment is minor, allowing me to study the beauty of the people around me.

Mark Twain was born and died under Halley’s Comet, an occurrence he predicted himself. Some find the comet to a be a prophet of doom, but I rather think having the comet burning brightly in the sky as you emerge from the womb must be a blessing.

I pray it presence is for Halley at this point in her life.

* * *

“Christopher, you remember my sixteenth birthday party?”

“Of course, it snowed in April. That doesn’t happen a lot, even in the suburbs of New York.”

“No, the thing the day before.”

“Lookin’ at your comet.”

Halley smiles and stares out the window again, completely forgetting what she wanted to say, but smiling nonetheless.

Halley would have fallen asleep in that booth if Christopher hadn’t led her out of her seat and walked her home, which was actually only two blocks away from the restaurant and right on the way to his hotel anyway. Plus, it wasn’t too smart for a woman to walk home alone in the city at night. The company didn’t hurt anyway.

Chapter 5

Shooting Star: Chapter 3

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 New York City is the inability to view the stars during the night, except in the theaters, where audiences are treated to some very famous ones. Tonight, however, slightly after midnight, there are quite a few stars visible in the sky. Not nearly as many as could be seen from a rural field beyond city limits, but Halley is satisfied with the modest light show, a weak smile creeping onto her face. Having decided the usual short-sleeve shirt to be far too dirty, Halley instead dons an oversized, periwinkle blue, long-sleeve cotton tee. With her eyelids drooping and sleeves hanging over her hands, she sighs before getting up from the chair and falling squarely onto the bed, delightful memories filling her head.

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 New York temper. Though a master of feigning foreign accents, Halley is unable to hazard a guess about where the man is Southern or not.

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 Georgia.

“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 Constance. Please start from line 112.”

“’Kay,” she mumbles and breathes in.

Chapter 4

Shooting Star: Chapter 2

The alarm buzzes rudely, as “6:00” now appears in ruby-red digits against the void-black background of the digital alarm clock resting on Halley’s apartment nightstand. Halley props herself up and rotates her head toward the clock, her eyes half-open, and falls limply back onto the pillow. These early mornings will kill me yet, she thinks.

But she forces herself out of bed. The enormous tee-shirt she wears falls to mid-thigh; it is noticeably wrinkled, matching her askew morning hair. She walks over to the closet and pulls out a crisply folded, white, button-up dress shirt and a thigh-length, charcoal-gray knit skirt. From the small dresser, she produces a pair of dark pantyhose and a pair of low-heel dress shoes from the floor. She lays all these on her bed. She then goes into the top drawer for the rest of her ensemble.

The oversized sleep shirt flutters to the bed, and little more rustling can be heard from the dresser —though for the room is empty except for the young brunette woman. The shirt is buttoned up. Stockings cover her legs. The skirt is slid up her legs and zipped up. One hand grabs a brush and quickly straightens out the wiry kinks of her straight hair. Then, both hands gather the long, mahogany-brown hair into a single handful, and in two swift, nearly mechanical motions, one of the hands twirls the hair into a tight coil and the other stabs the bun with a long plastic needle, black. One hand bats the bun to assure professional tightness. A mundane ritual takes place in the bathroom: a mascara brush applies color and thickness to her small eyelashes, another brush adds a soft shade of eye shadow. A touch of blush takes the autumn paleness out of her cheeks, and an unpretentious shade of coral red covers her lips. Halley inhales and exhales deliberately, smiling deliberately as well. “Okay, Superstar,” she tells herself, softly but not whispering, “let’s show the world what we’re made of.”

Halley walks down the short hallway of her apartment, an aura of great confidence surrounding her. She closes the door behind her on her way to work, which shakes the dry erase calendar pinned there, filled with audition dates.

* * *

A middle-aged couple sits down in Nana’s Breakfast Diner. Nana’s is the typical breakfast diner: the structure like an oversized mobile home with curved walls the color of aluminum and neon signs unceasingly stating its message: open. The husband of the pair, a clean-shaven man with dark grey hair, which is just beginning to recede, smiles at his wife, her dirty blond hair that is fading to the color of chalk in places. Halley walks up, an apron around her waist, two menus under her arm, an order booklet in her hand, and a pencil stashed behind her ear. With forced hospitality, she asks them, “Folks, what’ll y’all have today?” There’s that hint of a Southern accent in her voice that comes from living in New York all her life. And having acted in countless plays.

After receiving the menus, the wife excuses herself to the restroom. Halley walks to the counter and returns carrying two coffee mugs in one hand and two coffee pots in the other. She is a veteran diner waitress, even after working here for only a year and a half. “Regular or Decaf?” she prompts.

“Well, Miss… Hailey, is it?” the man says, lowering his eyebrow.

“Halley,” she replies, making the short ‘a’ sound audible. Oh Lord, she knows where this is going. “Sugar?” she asks, completely aware of and completely hating the irony of her question.

Obviously flirting, the man replies, “Deary, you are a fine woman, why don’t we…”

“No sugar, then? If you’ll excuse me, I have another table…” Halley firmly interrupts, with every hint of distaste hidden from her voice, but not an ounce of give. Her sternum shakes as she musters up the last bit of resolve from her depleting reserve. Her teeth unclench at the next booth, and the actress reemerges.

* * *

Halley, still in her outfit from work, minus the apron, stands on a harshly lit stage, and is handed a stack of papers, stapled together. A tall, wide man in the middle of the house of this low-quality auditorium suddenly bellows, “Okay, take it from page 14, Scene 11. Donovan, you’ll be Richard. Denise, you’ll be Anita. And Hailey, you’ll be Cassie.”

The three actors begin going through the scene. The director within fifteen second has made three deliberate scratches on his notepad. An assistant, a rather frail girl of no more than twenty years, listens intently to her boss’s obligatory whispered display of his superb discriminatory ability of actors. “Mr. Donovan is mumbling like a lunatic. Ms. Denise appears to believe that a proper English schoolgirl is supposed to act drunk. Then again, possibly it’s not her fault.” He gives a short, throaty chuckle at his own joke. “And Miss Hailey, bless her heart, still has the forced voice. She’s looks to be twenty-four and probably has been acting for twenty of it. A drama major, for sure. We get two dozen of them through each day. Her body language is perfect, I must admit, but her voice still isn’t natural.” He shakes his head with phony sympathy. With raised eyebrows, he looks to his assistant expectantly, who quickly takes on a face of great awe, and replies, “Good points, sir. Brilliant.” She mentally kicks herself for taking Journalism instead of Accounting at the community college.

Chapter 3

Shooting Star: Chapter 1

The spotlights in the basketball stadium shine brightly down upon the vast rows of chairs, occupied by hundreds of college graduates. An electrical problem has occurred, and the only lights that the staff could get to work were the bright spotlights. The resulting effect is a dimly lit room and a harshly lit stage. The pastel green curtain reflects a blinding glare onto the crowd.

Most of the eyes in the audience are only partially opened because of this. Some try to divert their eyes; their shrunken pupils watch the happenings on stage using on peripheral vision, their hands acting as makeshift visors. A few resourceful people wear their sunglasses. nd in vast room of squinters, one noticeable female within the graduating crowd appears much less fazed. The five-foot-three, brown-haired drama major sits comfortably on the fifth row, a dozen chairs in on the left side. Her legs are casually crossed; a satisfied smile sits on her face. She hardly squints, well-accustomed to harsh stage lights. During the announcements, she drums her hands on her thighs with an impatient tempo and give an occasionally sigh.

“Halley Electra DeMallora, Bachelor of Arts in Drama, with Honors,” the emcee announces, pronouncing her name with ease. As one of Halley’s professors and director of the majority of the plays she has performed in, he flawlessly pronounces her first name with the short ‘a.’ He doesn’t pause before saying the almost exotic middle name, as if it might be a SpellCheck-corrected typo. Finally, he places the stress on the ‘Mal’ of the hybrid French-Welch surname of ‘DeMallora.’

Halley rises fluidly, walking with intentional grace down the center aisle. With the phrase “with Honors” still fresh in her ears, her lips curl just a little bit more. It was worth that painful Advanced Geometry class she took to get the honors. Granted, she did have to give a lot of credit to her geometry tutor; especially for their five-hour study session that Halley endured, netting her a dainty 72% on the final, effectively passing her overall, though by less than a percent. Her tutor did receive a 98%, but she definitely got the better half of the deal; she was not the one who wrecked the grade curve and was not the victim of ruthless football players that had just lost their starting positions.

For a moment, she almost gives the impression of a bride walking down the aisle as she ascends the stairs and reverently accepts her diploma with a thankful bow of the head to the familiar presenter and a picture perfect smile to the audience. Yes, she seems to think, I think things are going to be splendid.

Chapter 2