Just Another New York Story

An Actress on Broadway Part II

It's two o'clock in the afternoon. The sun shines warm and bright as Veronica fast-walks to the subway, her arms cradling her overstuffed garment bag. She stayed in the shower longer than she'd planned to, but barring any delays due to train traffic or someone causing a track fire or other disturbance, she should be able to make her four o'clock call-time in Brooklyn with enough minutes to spare for "breakfast," as they call the first meal of the day on a film set—before the rest of the crowd of background players arrives and descends on the catering tent like starving wolves.

She's on day four of a seven-day shoot playing a "nondescript pedestrian in present day playing for winter." It's a series of overnights requiring multiple wardrobe and coat changes in a hot and crowded makeshift dressing area in the sawdust-covered back room of a coffin factory. Nevertheless, the checks will be good and will all but guarantee yet another month of New York rent.

Newly planted flowers thrive brightly in every tree box. The songs of the sparrows compete with the horns of swiftly skirting taxis and a loudly braking garbage truck. Veronica breathes in what feels like fresh air. She would love to just spend the day on the Upper West Side, taking a long, carefree walk to see the rows of different colored cherry blossoms in Riverside Park, then up to Grant's tomb and down the bike path along the sparkling Hudson River...But in just a few minutes, she'll be deep underground to eventually ascend onto a remote industrial outskirt of factories and automotive repair shops by the Gowanus Canal, where she'll be held in a storefront church basement after changing into her costume at the coffin factory, and there she'll sit with the other background players until the sun goes down and they all go back outside to start their work of walking on-camera by night, down and across streets, over and again until the words "That's a wrap!"

She looks up just as a burst of sun beams upon her old favorite: the orange-red brick building with the faded sign "Kirby Boardinghouse Rooms to Let." She stops and strains to read the old lettering, but the sun is too bright and she can't see a thing, so she moves on with speed to make up the time.

"No time for dreaming!" she declares to the sky. She rushes across the street to beat the light that's turning green, zooming past the hardware store, where Khaled is presiding over Ernesto's arranging of contact paper rolls on a table out front. She slows down just enough to peek inside the diner. Every seat is taken by what looks like a mixture of regulars and tourists from the nearby hostel. It feels like a lifetime ago that she was in there sitting on that stool, although it's probably only been about a month. Janet's behind the counter with her head thrown back in easy laughter. Veronica briefly wonders if she'll ever go in there again. She guesses she probably won't. There are just so many other places to try—like that new little farm-to-table café that just opened up next to the frozen yogurt place where she's been treating herself on Sundays. Maybe she'll ask her scene partner from her new acting class if she wants to meet up there next week...

"Possibilities!" she tells the sky, and that's when she almost crashes into him. Nimbly though, he skirts by in time.

"Sorry! Fran... cisco," she says, turning around.

He's walking backwards, waving a little brown paper bag from the old mom and pop pharmacy on the corner.

"Preparing for my colonoscopy," he yells to her, "Now if that ain't sexy!"

"Sexy," she says. It's the last word they'll share. New York is like that: Just as quickly as friends can be made, they can just as soon go back to being strangers. Maybe one of you reads the other one wrong, and you both lose interest in the book. It won't get written, not together anyway. Just leave it on the ledge and move on.

Veronica stares ahead through the afternoon sidewalk jumble as she triple-times it through and around the people and the pigeons and the dogs and the litter. Different ages, different sizes, different movements... She does her best not to cut too close to anyone (and when in doubt, she says she's sorry). "Courtesy Counts," as the subway slogan goes, and she's seen that adage hold true in the city time and again through her accreting New York moments.

She lets out a reactive sigh when she sees that two young people with clipboards are stationed in front of her subway entrance wearing green smocks that say "Clean. Earth. Now." They're attempting to engage the crowds filing into and out of the station which for the most part, are simply forking and flowing around them.

The girl in the smock wears black-rimmed glasses, a prominent silver nose ring, and dreads in a motley of colors. Someone bumps into her; she frowns and rubs her arm. The guy in the smock is tall and bouncy, with bright eyes and a toothy smile he seems determined to share with everyone who passes by whether they're looking at him or not. Veronica's mind races to find an out—she could cross the street and enter the station from the other corner, but that would take more time and the garment bag is feeling heavier by the second... She resolves to rush past them with a smile of good will.

The guy in the smock tries to block her.

"Hey, hello!" he says, smiling and waving his clipboard. "We just moved here two weeks ago from North Dakota—it's great to see a smiling face! You have a few seconds to spare for the environment?"

"C'mon what do I look like over here?" Veronica whines, indicating the heft of her garment bag as she pushes past them.

"This job suuuuuucks!" she hears the girl say through a groan.

"Aw, c'mon, it's fun!" the guy replies. "I'll buy you a Starbucks..."

Veronica laughs silently to herself as she hurries down the subway stairs, thinking I'm beginning to sound like Francisco's matzo ball friend...