TWO
As she groped for her keys in her purse, Riley forced her thoughts back onto the audition itself. She was confident that she had done well; she had been improving every time she went to a new audition, and the casting team seemed to have responded positively.
Riley unlocked the door to her car and climbed into the driver’s seat, thinking of how different the audition had been from her first ones after arriving in the city. Some of those girls in there were on their first open call, Riley thought with a sigh as she started the car and put it in reverse. She had bombed her first several auditions completely; she had been so nervous, so inexperienced, and at the same time so over-confident in her natural ability, that she’d come across as a waste of time. One of the few saving graces that Riley had possessed had been her ability to accept criticism and feedback without becoming defensive; she’d mended her ways after several notes from casting directors and from her agent alike, and had booked her first gigs as an actor not long after.
“Maybe Mom was right,” Riley murmured to herself. The audition had gone well, and she was fairly certain that the casting directors had liked her; but after three years, Riley knew very well that it wasn’t merely a matter of doing well in the audition.
Riley sighed, scrubbing at her face with one hand as she turned onto the freeway to get home. She turned the stereo up louder as she reflected on every moment of the audition. She had been on at least six auditions in the past two weeks—fitting them in, where she could, on days off or in the mornings and afternoons before her shifts at the restaurant, but hadn’t heard a peep back from any of the casting teams involved. Maybe three years was long enough to try and make a go of becoming an actress. She remembered the last time she’d talked to her mother back in Vegas; the older woman had said, “At what point do you decide that it’s just not going to happen and get a real job?” Riley knew her mother meant well, and was just trying to look out for her, but it didn’t make her words any less painful.
Riley checked the time as the traffic in front of her began to slow. Some days it was easy to look at the near-constant LA traffic with a philosophical attitude; but she had only two hours to get home, eat, and get changed into her work uniform before she had to leave again to get to the restaurant. In spite of her light lunch, eaten quickly while she waited her turn in the audition room, Riley’s stomach was growling. If she didn’t have time to eat something substantial before she went in for the night, she knew she’d be dead on her feet hours before closing—and her tips would suffer.
Riley had argued with her mother on more than one occasion since coming to LA about the subject of her career, or lack thereof. She had managed to land a fairly steady stream of gigs, and she had her SAG card, but she hadn’t yet pushed through to anything more lucrative or engaging than bit parts in TV shows—parts that almost never had actual character names attached to them. There were too many beautiful women in Hollywood for Riley to stand out on her looks alone; even with her unusual red hair and sea-green eyes, she was one of a crowd.
“Keep doing the work, Riley,” she told herself, as the traffic began to ease, the needle on the speedometer inching up slowly as she accelerated. “If you keep doing the work, you’ll keep being cast, and eventually something will break.” It was the same advice that her agent had given her countless times.
Riley’s stomach growled and she hoped against hope that she would make it back to the apartment with enough time to actually cook something; she had plenty of quick-fix meals in the cabinet and fridge, but Riley wanted more than anything to be able to sit down and enjoy her meal, let her mind drift and get out of “audition mode” before she had to rush out to get to the restaurant for her shift. As it was, she was already tired; her day had gone on for hours and it wasn’t even time for work yet. She thought longingly of the possibility of taking a long shower when she finally got home from work—or maybe a hot bath, with one of the bath bombs she’d hoarded as gifts from friends and family. Riley smiled at the thought; she didn’t think she had any auditions to go to the next day—maybe she’d even sleep in.
She checked the time once more as traffic smoothed and took a deep breath, throwing her shoulders back and beginning to pull her mind into work mode.
THREE
Riley had expected the Friday evening shift to be busy; but when she’d arrived with just five minutes to spare, it had become clear that it was going to be an even more difficult night than usual. Two of the other servers had called in sick, and Riley had heard the front of house manager discussing emergency changes with one of the hosting managers. “Riley! You’re going to cover your section and half of Lisa’s for tonight, okay?”
She had accepted; there wasn’t much else that she could do under the circumstances. From the moment she’d clocked in and accepted her section, Riley had had four tables to wait on. At least I’m not the only one dealing with this, she thought as she strode quickly from the service hatch to her table to let the couple waiting for their food know that it would be up in a matter of minutes. The other servers on staff were every bit as harried as she was. People never seemed to call out on slow nights—it always seemed to be on a night when they were packed.
Riley stopped at the table and put on her best smile. “Thank you both so much for waiting,” she said. “I just wanted to let you both know that your entrées will be up in just a few more minutes. The sous-vide veal chop was an excellent choice.”
The man nodded and his date took a quick sip of her champagne; they both looked at ease, and Riley was grateful that so far none of the patrons had gotten impatient.
As she moved from one table to the other, Riley felt her phone buzzing in her pocket. Glancing over at the hostess desk, she thought about ducking into the back to at least check who it was calling her; almost all of her friends knew that she was working that night—but there was a chance that one of them might be calling to invite her to after-work drinks. One look at the host station told her that the rest of the staff would rake her over a bed of hot coals if they caught her sneaking off the floor; even as packed as the dining room already was, there were about a half-dozen more groups waiting to be seated.
Riley trotted to the service hatch and loaded up her tray with her orders, checking the dishes against the order sheets to make sure that everything was as it should be. Her phone stopped buzzing and Riley told herself that whoever it was, they could just leave her a voicemail; she’d get to it after the kitchen closed, when everyone was doing side work and getting ready to leave for the night.
“Here we are,” she said as she approached the table. “Sous-vide veal chop with parsnip mash and onion jus for the gentleman and terrine of duck with micro greens for the lady.” Riley set each of the dishes down carefully. “Enjoy your entrées; I’ll check in with you to make sure everything is to your liking in a few minutes.”
She moved to another table in her section, where the woman apparently in charge of the group had a question.
“Yes, could I ask—is the sweet potato gratin made with organic milk?”
Riley thought to herself that there had been a time when questions like that made her wonder about the lives of people who had the time to fret over every last component of their restaurant meal.
“Organic heavy cream and butter,” Riley said, nodding lightly. “All of our ingredients are sourced from local farms, creameries, and butcher shops, which is why our menu changes so much season to season.”
“So the bœuf bourguignon?”
“Is made from ethically-raised free-range beef, humanely processed.”
“Then that is what I’ll have,” the woman said, setting her menu down on the white tablecloth.
“I would recommend the red burgundy with that,” Riley said, inclining her head slightly to the woman. “It highlights the wine in the sauce and mellows some of the gamier flavors of the beef.”
“Then that is precisely what I’ll have.”
Riley nodded and made a note on her pad
before turning to the other women in the group. After a few minutes, they all managed to decide on their entrées, and Riley turned to put the order in on the system. Her phone buzzed in her pocket again and Riley cast a furtive glance across the floor. It’s not likely to be someone else calling me—I’m not that popular. She dismissed the idea of taking a quick break to answer it, deciding that she would just have to wait until things slowed down and see who it was. Probably Mom, calling to “check in” on me.
Riley focused on the touch screen, glancing down at her pad quickly as she put in the order in a series of rapid taps. One of the women at the table was apparently allergic to tomatoes; another one wanted to make sure there were no gluten-containing ingredients in her sauce. Riley had grown skeptical of exacting dietary requirements, but she had enough of a sense of self-preservation to stick to the requests that came in, even when it made the chefs mad at her; the last thing she wanted was to find herself fired because she’d neglected to put in a request, only for a patron to end up sick.
She went to pick up the plates for another table and one of the chefs poked his head out.
“Townsend, what’s with the ‘no butter’ request on the steak hollandaise? Doesn’t she know that hollandaise is basically all butter?”
“I just take the orders,” Riley said with a rueful smile. “Not my job to educate them about the hypocrisy in their wishes.”
The chef grumbled, turning back to his work, and Riley loaded up her tray to carry another table of orders out into the dining room.
She narrowly missed colliding with a couple’s five-year-old daughter, who apparently had to use the bathroom immediately—so immediately that the little girl didn’t even bother to make sure her trajectory was clear. Riley barely managed to keep the dishes on her tray as she sidestepped, breathing in sharply. She exhaled and kept her face as composed as possible, taking the last few steps to the table and smiling at all of the patrons seated there as if nothing had happened at all.
“Some people,” the man at the table said, shaking his head and glancing in the direction of the little girl.
“Why someone would want to bring their young child to an expensive restaurant like this one is beyond me,” his date said, joining him in censure.
“Thankfully I was able to make it to your table with everything intact,” Riley said, broadening her smile as she deposited the plates carefully on the table. “I’ll be right back with your wine.”
Her phone buzzed again as she strode as quickly as possible to the bar, and Riley gritted her teeth, wishing that whoever it was calling her would just leave a voicemail and let her call them back.
As she ferried the drink order and another food order to her tables, Riley began to worry that it might be something urgent—even her mother wasn’t quite that persistent when she just wanted to chat and find out how Riley was doing, and calling over and over again like that would only come up if someone were in the hospital.
She looked around for the front-of-house manager, Jill. Riley spotted the older woman as she took care of the last of her most urgent tables; everyone seated in her section had food in front of them, at least. Jill was as sharply styled as ever, her graying blonde hair swept back into a sleek bun, her makeup flawless, wearing all black with shined shoes. She managed to simultaneously stand out and blend in with the servers’ uniforms of ironed black slacks and starched white shirts with black vests and bowties.
“Jill!”
Riley hurried to stop the woman as she moved from the hostess station to the office at the back of the restaurant.
“Something wrong, Riley?” Jill asked, turning to look at her, and Riley summoned up the little bit of courage she could find in the moment.
“Someone’s blowing my phone up, and I’m worried it might be an emergency,” Riley said quickly. “Do you mind if I duck out for like two minutes, just to see what’s going on?”
Jill frowned. “We’re in the weeds, Riley; I need you turning tables over or doing side work, or we’ll all be stuck here until two in the morning.”
“Just two minutes, Jill.”
The older woman considered it for a beat, glancing around the dining room.
“Two minutes,” Jill said finally. “But don’t be shocked if everyone else on shift gives you the stink eye for it.”
Riley shook her head. “I totally get it,” she said, nodding quickly.
She cast a quick glance over the dining room and saw that for the moment at least, none of her tables needed anything. She darted through the door separating the front of house from the back of house, sprinting through the short hallway that led along the kitchen and towards the back door.
Riley caught the door as she went through it, keeping it from slamming shut and locking her out. The alley behind the restaurant reeked of cigarettes from whoever had been outside last—probably one of the chefs, Riley decided, since she hadn’t noticed any of the other servers off the floor. She slipped her hand into her pocket and took her phone out, quickly unlocking the screen. The notifications proclaimed that she had five missed calls, and Riley shook her head in disbelief. Her confusion deepened when she saw that all five of the calls were from an unknown number—someone not in her contacts, but the area code was local.
All at once Riley remembered the audition; she had put it so firmly out of her mind, convinced that there was no way she would get a part, that when things had gotten busy she had forgotten that it had even happened. Riley’s heart beat faster and her stomach twisted with dread; if it was someone from the casting department calling to ask her to come in for another reading then she was well and truly out of consideration after missing five attempted calls.
“Well, shit,” she said, frowning down at her phone. Why would they call so late at night? “I would think even the most out of touch casting director would figure that most actors have ‘real’ jobs,” Riley muttered, briefly letting her irritation at the timing of the calls overcome her disappointment at having missed them. Riley sighed and started to put her phone back into her pocket, resigned to the fact that she most likely wasn’t going to hear anything more from the production company.
Just as soon as she had the phone in her pocket, however, it began to buzz again, and Riley’s heart stuttered in her chest as she fumbled to get it back out. The same number flashed across the screen, and Riley bit back a shocked, jubilant yelp at the luck that anyone would try and call her again after getting her voicemail five times.
Riley took a quick breath to steady her voice, tapped the ‘accept’