Reel (Hollywood Renaissance #1) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,9

have seen her before. I recognize this feeling of finding something unexpected and exceptional.

Discovery.

After a while, beauty blurs. In my business, you’ve seen one pretty face . . . so for me, a well-constructed face doesn’t necessarily hold my attention the way it did when I was younger. Surgeons can construct a great face. Beauty can be bought.

This. What she has, what she does, is not about beauty.

She’s attractive, I guess. Even under the thick layer of stage makeup and the wig and the costume, there’s an arresting quality to her.

I mentally strip every performer when I meet them. Remove the makeup, costume, whatever identity they’ve assumed to examine what lies beneath. The bones under the skin. The soul under the flesh. It’s a knee-jerk response after years of casting for movies. I automatically disassemble them into their smallest parts. Even when I’m not working with an actor, I assess them to see what’s there for me to use.

There’s so much here.

If she were a room, all the windows and doors would be flung open. There is an unboundedness to her, even as she exhibits the restraint of craft. She’s obviously well-trained and disciplined, but her spirit gallops like a horse given its head, lengthening the reins until it runs wild. Her face tells the story before she delivers one line. She’s adularescent, the glow of a stone that comes from beneath the surface—like all the brightest parts of her aren’t available to the naked eye, and onstage she brings it out for the audience to see.

For much of the play, she interacts with other characters, but near the middle, the stage clears until she stands alone in the spotlight. The stage is vast, and she seems so small, it could easily swallow her, but it doesn’t. She commands the space and when she reaches the pivotal monologue, anyone else onstage would only be in her way.

Splendor

There’s splendor in our kisses

And awe in every breath

When you touch me, just like that,

just like that right there, the world stops

Beneath your fingers, I shiver. I crumble. Your caress leaves me boneless, weightless

One glance from you, the sun stands still in my chest

High noon, high rise, high on you

My field of poppies, my field of dreams

My splendor in the grass

Splendor, splendor, splendor

Chase me. Catch me. Wrap me in your fantasies.

Feed me from the storehouse of your love.

Let’s sustain each other. Let’s enjoy each other. Let’s find forever.

Each and every eternity.

I’ll trade my heart for yours.

And we will be splendor, you and me.

* * *

She and I are not alone in the theater. I know hundreds of people around me hear her words, too, but somehow, it feels like she delivers the words to me. To only me. I wonder if everyone listening feels that way, too.

That’s the alchemy of this actress. She reaches you. With an audience this large, she makes it personal. In a story that is pretend, she makes it feel true.

And in a moment when I wasn’t looking, I’ve found exactly what I was looking for.

4

Neevah

When the show reaches its climax, at the very end, the song pries the final note from my diaphragm, pulls it from my throat and suspends it—leaves it throbbing in the air. The theater goes quiet for the space of a breath held by 800 people and then explodes.

Applause.

The relief is knee-weakening. I literally have to grab John, the lead actor’s, arm for support. He doesn’t miss a beat, pulling me into his side and squeezing.

“Bravo,” he whispers, a broad, genuine smile spread across his face. The last song made me cry, and my face, still wet from those tears, splits into a wide, disbelieving grin.

I did it. I survived my first Broadway performance.

The lights drop and we rush backstage, a cacophony of laughter and chatter filling the hidden passageways. When the curtain call begins, the cast return to the stage in small waves, the applause building as the principals take their bows.

And then it’s my turn. On legs still shaky, I leave the safety of the wings, the long skirt of my costume belling out around me. I take center stage. The applause crescendos, approval vibrating through my bones and jolting my soul. Someone thrusts flowers into my arms and the sweet smell wafts around me. Every sense, every molecule of my being strains, opens, stretches to absorb this small slice of triumph. I can’t breathe deeply enough. The air comes in shallow sips, and I’m dizzy. The world spins like a top, a