Page 59 of The Dramatic Life of Jonah Penrose
Jonah wanted to hug him, he wanted to wrap him in his arms and shower him with kisses, but doing that on Kentish Town Road at an ungodly hour didn’t seem like the right time to do it. “You’re an idiot. You know that, right?” Jonah said, putting the phone back into his pocket. “You could just... you know... say it?”
“Well, I can’t now, can I?”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s going to sound weird and unnatural.”
Jonah laughed and kissed his cheek. “See? This is why you’re an idiot.”
“Youcould say it, you know.”
“No, I can’t.” Jonah shook his head. “You’ve made it into something and now we can’t address it for at least seven working days. Who knows, you might change your mind by then. Karaoke can make people feel all kinds of things.”
“That’s very true. We’ll blame the karaoke.”
“Splendid idea.”
Twenty-Four
“Are we ghosts?”
—“The Song of the Dead,”The Wooden Horse, Act Two
He fucked up. Jonah knew the moment he stepped to the left instead of the right that his chance at playing Bobby Child was well and truly over. He saw the way the casting director’s smile turned into a deep grimace, and no matter how well he read his lines later in the day or how brilliantly he sang he couldn’t get the smile to reappear. The hours he spent recording audition tapes suddenly became futile, because in person he couldn’t remember the difference between left and right, and now everyone in the room thought he was a complete and utter idiot, and they weren’t wrong in thinking it.
To think he could lose a role because of one little misstep might be verging on dramatic, but Jonah knew how picky casting teams could be; they had dozens of people lined up for the role, eager to take it, and things like Olivier wins or the theatre magazine announcing him and Dexter as the West End’s golden couple didn’t matter. They didn’t matter, because Jonah just danced like someone who didn’t know how their feet worked. A newborn lamb jittering around a field while its mother looked on in bemusement. Melanie would kill him; she told him time and time again to rehearse the moves until they were burned into the back of his eyes, and he did, but no one could account for nerves on the day. And he would put it down to nerves to save himself from admitting he simply blanked and went in a totally different direction than everyone else.
It didn’t help he’d been practicing for the audition and recording histapes behind Dexter’s back. He wanted to tell him, he really did, but Melanie swore him to secrecy and made a pointed note that despite his relationship with Dexter flourishing, he was still a rival when it came to jobs in the West End. For all they knew, Dexter could have been auditioning for the same role; he still vanished on Sundays, and Jonah remained too worried to ask him what he did from Sunday until Tuesday, just in case he admitted to auditioning for all the roles Melanie was throwing Jonah’s way. He didn’t want to compete with him, and if Melanie’s hunch about Dexter taking over the role of Achilles was correct, he didn’t want there to be any awkwardness between them either. He needed to be seen as stepping away from the role rather than losing it; that way Dexter could take over with little guilt and they could continue with their domestic bliss bubble Jonah very much didn’t want to pop.
Melanie Agent Extraordinaire:Casting director called. What happened?
Jonah:Already? I only just left.
Melanie Agent Extraordinaire:Call me.
“Jonah.” She answered on the first ring. “They loved your audition tape. What the hell happened?”
“I went left instead of right.”
He heard her exhale a disappointed breath and could picture her pinching the skin between her eyes in frustration. “You’ll be the death of me. I sent you the choreography tape a month ago to learn.”
“I take it they called to say I didn’t get it.”
“They want you to go back and do the dance part again next week,” she said, much to his surprise. “They really like you but were worried you hadn’t committed to learning the choreography. They’re willing to give you another shot, so don’t you bloody well blow it, Jonah.”
“I won’t.”
“And I have another audition lined up for you. Well, I say audition. They called me to see if you might be interested, and I said I would discuss it with you. They were... very keen.”
Jonah dodged pedestrians as he made his way to the tube station, keeping his head down as a sudden downpour of late September rain erupted from the sky. “Who?”
“Julianna Orwell.”
Upon hearing the name, Jonah stopped and ducked beneath a doorway, sheltering himself while cupping his hand around his phone to hear better, because he was pretty sure Melanie had just said the name Julianna Orwell, and if it were true, then he needed to be standing still to take it in.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“Julianna Orwell.”
