the shake

(a companion to the play they walked out of. sally, the night before the audition.)

The dashboard clock said 10:47. The lot had three cars left in it, including mine, and one of them was the manager's, and one of them was probably a forgotten one because it had a flat. I was in the third.

I was supposed to be home an hour ago. My mom had texted and I had not answered. The polo I was still wearing smelled like popcorn and the disinfectant they make us spray on the soda nozzles at the end of every shift. The audition was the next afternoon. I did not need to be in this parking lot. I was in this parking lot.

The line was gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, towards Phoebus' lodging. I had been working on it for two weeks. I knew where the breath went. I knew where the diaphragm went. I knew the fiery was supposed to come out clean and instead it came out with a tiny shake every time and I did not know how to fix the tiny shake.

I said it. To the rearview mirror. Watching my own mouth.

Gallop apace. You fiery-footed steeds. Towards Phoebus' lodging.

The shake was there.

I said it again. Slower. The shake was still there.

I had heard Maddie do it once in class, just for fun, on a Tuesday in November. Maddie did not have the shake. Maddie had this thing where her voice rose and fell in places you did not expect, and it made you forget the words were old. She was not even trying. That was the part that broke me. She was not even trying.

I was trying. I had been trying for two weeks. I was trying so hard the trying was starting to leak into the line itself, which was probably the problem.

My mother had told me, at the dinner table a year ago, that acting was a fine thing to do but I should also pick a major. She had said it kindly. She had said I just want you to have something to fall back on, sweetheart, and the sweetheart was the part that hurt the most because she did not say it the rest of the time. She only said it when she was about to tell me something I did not want to hear.

I said the line again.

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds.

The shake.

The shake was the part of me that did not believe the audition would matter. The shake was the part of me that already knew Maddie had it. The shake was every dinner table conversation about something to fall back on, in my voice, in the place where the voice is supposed to be free.

I did not know how to take the shake out without taking the wanting out.

I wanted the part. I wanted it in the way you want one specific thing when you are seventeen and you have not figured out what wanting is for yet, and so the want goes wherever it can find walls to push against. The walls were Juliet's lines. I had been pushing for two weeks.

I sat in the lot. The clock said 10:53. I would not get the part. I knew this in the way you know things at 10:53 in a movie theater parking lot, when nobody is around, and the polo smells like popcorn, and the line in your throat will not come clean.

I said it one more time anyway.

The shake was still there.

I drove home.

— tilt