“What’s to see?” she said. She went farther in, glanced at the kitchen, and then looked at what would be her bedroom. “You should see where I just left,” she muttered. “So I know the rent. We’ll split the utilities. The phone work?”
“Yes. Just today. Mr. Abbot arranged it for me. Here’s the number,” I said, handing her the slip of paper with it. I had already copied it and pinned it to the wall.
“Great. All right if I move in today? I’m staying with a friend who wants her sofa back.”
“Yes, of course.”
She looked at me again, this time really looking at me. “You want to be a singer?”
“I am a singer. I came to develop my career on Broadway.”
“No kidding.” She thought a moment. “You don’t have an agent, too, do you? Your powerful friend of your music teacher get you one?”
“Oh, no. What about you? I think you’re a dancer, right?”
“I’m a dancer. I have an agent, but he’s not worth more than a subway token. So you have a job at the Last Diner?”
“Yes.”
“Another friend of your music teacher?”
“He’s the friend, period,” I said. “The manager.”
“Yeah? I freelance at a burger joint. Maybe you’ll help me get some part-time work there if I need it.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I couldn’t promise that. He’s doing me so many favors as it is.”
“Don’t worry about it. When’s your first audition?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get a copy of Playbill yet. I thought I’d settle in first and then—”
“I have one. I’ll bring it when I return, and I’ll give you my share of the rent.”
“Okay.”
She had a way of looking at me that made me feel I wasn’t authentic.
“You just decided to come here and be on Broadway, huh? Just like that?”
“To try. You never know what you can and can’t do until you try. I sang in pubs back home, and I was very popular.”
“Pubs. Not exactly training for Broadway, you know.”
“Oh, I’ve been in shows back home.”
“I’m Irish, but I’ve never been to Ireland. I’ve never been out of New York unless you want to count stepping into Jersey for a party. Don’t ask me anything about the Irish, either. I haven’t spoken to any relatives there. We can go shopping for some grub when I return.”
Like everyone else I had met here, she spoke so quickly, barely taking a breath between sentences.
“Grub?”
“Food. What do you call that in Guildford, England?”
“Food.”
She laughed and went to the door. “Teach me some proper English, and I’ll teach you some basic steps. Broadway singers have to dance, too.”
“Really?”
She raised her eyes the way my father often did when I said something he thought dumb. I didn’t mean I didn’t know that. I meant really, she’d teach me something? She shook her head like I was someone to be pitied and left.
Not only did most people here speak so quickly, I thought, they did everything so quickly, impulsively. I wished I had spent a little more time getting to know her, even though I was predisposed to say yes simply because I was worried about my funds. She didn’t exactly have a letter of reference when she came to my door. Should I have hesitated, done some sort of checking? Had I made another mistake to place at the foot of my innocence? How many mistakes could I make before I’d be sent home?
Then again, Piper Hurley didn’t seem to care to know much about me, either, before she had decided to move in with me. I could be some sort of young serial killer or something. Did I look that desperate and innocent? It hadn’t taken me long to realize that if I did, it wasn’t a good thing here.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” my father would warn. But I was fleeing from all that reasonableness and logic, wasn’t I?
Just get used to it all. Get used to the speed. The world could easily pass you by if you are too cautious, I told myself, and returned to cleaning the kitchen to at least get it vaguely to my mother’s standards.