doing pageant makeup? Oh right, she was in a pageant…’ Sheryl, on the other hand, was not as enthusiastic about my little ‘break’ as I imagined she would be. The Monday following the shoot, I’d met her in the salon at our usual time and told her the good news. I waited for her usual shrieks of excitement but none came. She just nodded her head in silence instead. Because her hand was still in a splint, we had been forced to cancel all of our bookings for the upcoming week anyway, so the fact that I was leaving her assistant-less for two weeks wasn’t the problem. Her feigned nonchalance made it quite clear–she wished she had booked the job instead.
‘Oh my gawd! It’s so cute!’ Brooke gushed suddenly, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Jackie, look! Isn’t it adorable?’ Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she smiled sweetly, enchanted by the sprawling Victorian inn just outside our window. While I nodded my head, I secretly hoped we were staying somewhere else. Maybe it was the Californian in me, but I preferred clean, modern spaces over nineteenth-century structures decorated with doilies and hand-painted stencils. Apparently, I was in the minority. Two of Brooke’s dancers, as excited as she was, waited in the lobby to greet her.
‘Look how pretty!’ one shrieked, pointing to the large arrangement of fresh flowers on display near the front desk.
‘So beat,’ the other agreed.
Even Sasha, who had complained to me about this trip for nearly an hour as we waited for the video shoot to wrap, genuinely seemed happy to be here. She trotted through the reception area with a big smile on her face, turning to me before laughing, apparently at my expression, which must have betrayed my distaste for the inn. As if on cue, Robert–hard to imagine ever admitting to having a good time–twirled through the lobby with another man on his arm. Okay…so maybe it wasn’t the hotel that had lifted his spirits overnight.
‘Oh, this place is incredible! How obsessed am I? No, seriously!’ His shrill laugh caught me off-guard. I listened as Robert gushed to his boy toy about their room, talking breathlessly about the details he loved (the period brass chandeliers and the lace curtains) as opposed to the things he was obsessed with (the Victorian rose wallpaper and the hotel owner’s personal collection of Boyd’s Bears). I hoped that jolly Robert was here to stay.
By the time my room was ready, I had only ten minutes to change and make sure my set bag was in order. I left myself with only seven, however, after stashing the oh-so-creepy collection of porcelain dolls adorning my hotel bed into the closet. I pulled on an adorable Trina Turk tweed mini that Lauren had generously loaned to me after I’d called her on the verge of tears, distraught that I had nothing cool to wear. Only now did I realize I’d forgotten tights to go with it. With no time to waste worrying over my own appearance, I slipped on a pair of wedge heels and dashed out the door, making it downstairs just in time to jump in one of the buses to the venue. We pulled out onto Broadway, one of the busiest areas in Saratoga Springs during the winter. People outside ducked in and out of the bustling bistros and funky boutiques housed in the Victorian storefronts that lined the streets. Turning off Broadway, the bus chugged toward the city’s edge. The concert was set to take place at a brand-new, state-of-the-art theater that had just been built on the campus of a small liberal arts college. The Emerson Brothers were one of the five big acts that had been booked to help kick off the venue’s opening season with a bang.
Inside the sprawling performing arts center, decidedly out of place in comparison to the older buildings it neighbored, people buzzed back and forth excitedly. When I arrived, a group of volunteers, presumably college students, had just finished setting up so Brooke could do her sound check. I wandered backstage as they were leaving, pulling up a chair near the sound console to watch her in action. Save for the chatter of a prerecorded vocal track that Brooke relied on during her dance-heavy numbers–Gary, the sound engineer, was working on it now–the auditorium was strangely silent.
‘What would happen if it gave out?’ I blurted out as my curiosity got the best of me.
Gary, not looking up from his work, muttered back with certainty, ‘Wouldn’t happen…’
‘Really? How so?’
‘There’s a backup system, so ain’t nothing ever gonna go wrong,’ he assured me in a way that also suggested that he no longer wished to make small talk.
I focused my attention on the stage. It was plastered with Emerson Brothers posters: three teenage faces, frosted tips and pearly whites and airbrushed to perfection. Additional signage peppered throughout showed a cartoon character wearing gold chains, baggy jeans, and a basketball jersey with SC printed on it, drinking a can of–you guessed it–Street Cred. Emerging from behind a large, cartoonish basketball shoe, standing there in her faded gray sweat suit, Brooke finally began performing.
‘Mad-ness!’ She belted into the microphone. The sound of her voice–the way it seemed to fill the big, empty space surrounding us with spirit–was invigorating. I was quickly reminded of the collage of sounds that had made up the musical moments of my life thus far. Between my grandmother, ‘Dodo’ as we called her, and one of my father’s famous clients, an actor/musician who had opened up his own record company, my introduction to music came at a very young age. From six on, it seemed as if we were always around the recording studio. And during the days that we weren’t, I’d hammer away on the keys of that baby grand I had discovered in one corner of our living room. Playing it was something that just came naturally to me. I can only explain it by saying that when I looked down at the keys, they just made sense to me. Listening to Brooke up on that stage, I was immediately aware of the rare opportunity I had stumbled upon. Just as Brooke was finishing, I could hear muffled voices gathering on the other side of the venue doors as people began to line up outside. How many people would kill to be in my position?
Past the gaudy décor, I made my way toward the cluster of private dressing rooms behind the upstage wall. The Emerson Brothers congregated beneath the harsh fluorescent lights in one of the large makeup areas, each waiting their turn. Their longtime artist ploughed through them, one by one, slathering concealer over the dark circles lining their eyes and coating their peach fuzz with layers of powder–not a beat missed; it reminded me of an assembly line. I paused for a moment to watch–there was nothing special about her technique–in fact, we were technically working the same job for the same amount of money. But there was a difference between her and me, and a very important one at that. She was a veteran, a true professional, and because she had paid her dues she had the job security that I did not. There were plenty of girls like me all over Los Angeles, working in cosmetic boutiques, salons, and small photo shoots–all eager to get their hands on an opportunity like this one. Continuing down the hall, I decided right then and there that I would do whatever it took to prove myself in this industry, and to never take a moment of this experience for granted.
I noticed a blue piece of paper that read Brooke Parker hanging from the door to the right of where I stood. Reaching for the doorknob, hoping to unload the heavy makeup bag I’d been toting around with me, a voice chimed sweetly from behind me, ‘It’s awfully quiet in there.’ The voice belonged to a young blond leaning against an adjacent wall.
‘Excuse me?’ I asked, startled.
‘I’m Hayley–I’m friends with Brooke. I go to school about two and a half hours east of here.’
Hayley was a classic beauty: thin and tall, almost the spitting image of Grace Kelly…from the neck up, that is. Her hair, long and stringy, fell limp around her shoulders, nearly blending into the textured yarn of the shapeless woven poncho she wore. Outdated Mudd jeans hung low on her hips, flaring at the ankle to reveal suede Birkenstock sandals paired with rainbow-striped socks, which encased each of her toes like a glove. Hayley went to Syracuse, she told me, with a classmate and fellow World Teach volunteer she’d met in Namibia. Just a hemp-necklace shy of hippie, Hayley was a freshman at Syracuse. We were so wrapped up in our conversation that we both nearly jumped out of our skin when the door to the dressing room swung open. Standing in front of us, Jesse looked strangely disheveled. He seemed out of breath and was fumbling with something below his waist. Though I tried not to look, I couldn’t help but stare in shock, watching as he struggled