Page 90 of Forget About Me

Time to get my shit all the way together. Once that’s done, I’ll have something to say when I leave a message for Ben.

What did Mr. Porter say about Mrs. Rosen looking for a tenant?

CHAPTER THIRTY

“Pride (In the Name of Love)” - U2

Ben’s Very First Mixtape, Song #4

BEN

I’ve never uttered the words I’m about to say to my agent of six years, so I take a deep breath to make sure they come out without a waver. “This is what I want.”

To his credit, Kirk Vancouver doesn’t even blink. In fact, he smiles and puts his feet up on his desk. “As long as you’re not going to say ‘retire,’ I’m all ears.”

“I’m not ready to retire, but I do want to make some changes. I want to make New York my base, split with Boston. I want to do theater in Boston and transition to film and TV down in New York.”

He nods slowly, then his feet drop to the floor and he begins to flip through his Rolodex. “Well, not all of my contacts here will serve you. It’s good you did that modeling job for the shoe company. That casting director does all kinds of work. However, you will get some resistance. New York casting directors can be pretty snooty about acting chops. Out here, casting people don’t care so much; they just want the eye candy or the fan base.” He rolls his eyes. “I hate to say it, but doing those plays at that damn Shakespeare theater might actually work for you.”

When I open my mouth to protest, he raises his hand. “I know, I know, it has a good reputation, blah, blah, blah.” He dips his chin. “But it’s not Broadway. And that’s all some of them care about.”

I sit forward in my chair. “I know it’s not going to be easy. But this is important to me. My family and my… my girlfriend are in Boston. And a theater that I care about.”

He narrows his eyes.

I lean forward. I want him to take this seriously, and I do want him as my partner if he can get on board with this shift. “I know the money is crap at the theater, which is why we’ll both be better off if I can get some gigs in New York. I’ll do whatever I need to. Meet whoever I need to.”

“You’re going to need new headshots to start.”

“Already made an appointment with a photographer.”

He nods. “All right, then. I’ll start making calls.”

“Thanks, Kirk. Thanks for working with me on this.”

“That’s what you pay me for. Now get outta here. I got work to do.” Shooing me away, he pulls a card from the Rolodex and punches a number into his phone.

“Yeah. Me too,” I answer.

My days are filled with the final CK shoots, meetings that will hopefully launch this career shift, and packing up my stuff to send back east. My nights are filled with making plans for the future.

I just need to figure out how to prove to Lucy that I’m not going to run away again. I should’ve tried to talk to her before I left. But I think that I need to show her how serious I am. I need her to know that I’ve always loved her.

A mixtape alone isn’t going to cut it.

An apartment in New York isn’t the same as one in Boston, but it’s a hell of a lot closer than LA. Even if I could afford to retire right now, I don’t want to. I’m an actor. Working with Shakespeare Boston has made that clear to me. It’d be a waste of the past seven years to throw away the contacts Kirk and I have cultivated. I just hope that Lucy will be okay with a semi-long-distance thing.

Ripping open yet another box from my storage unit, I pull out a stack of notebooks from college and chuck them into a garbage bag. The plays, I’ll keep. Might need to find a monologue or two to audition with. At the bottom of the box, a stack of papers bound by two rubber bands has my heart in my throat.

I completely forgot that I kept these.

One of the bands breaks when I pull it off.

They’re all letters, almost all unfinished.

All addressed to Lucy. At UMass Amherst.

No stamps.

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